Welcome parade in works for Bloomington-based troops

Thursday, September 6, 2007 2:21 PM CDT

BLOOMINGTON — Soldiers with the Bloomington-based military police battalion are expected home by mid-October, and support group members hope people will line up to cheer their return.

“Be ready to turn out to fill the streets,” said Mike Matejka, legislative affairs liaison for Operation Porchlight, a local support group for military families.

The organization is a partnership of American Red Cross of the Heartland, PATH, the United Way of McLean County and the Bloomington and Normal Trades and Labor Assembly.

Matejka said his group will receive word 72 hours before the return of soldiers with the Illinois National Guard’s 33rd Military Police Battalion. Though the group can’t give a date now for the soldiers’ return, “we want you to be ready.”

About 70 soldiers in the battalion were deployed to Iraq in late June 2006. Matejka noted that people lined Veterans Parkway to send off the soldiers at that time.

The returning soldiers will follow a parade route from Illinois State University onto Kingsley Street as it heads south through Normal and Bloomington until they arrive at Armory Drive, which intersections Main Street just north of Veterans Parkway.

Lyn Hruska, executive director of the American Red Cross of the Heartland, said the soldiers were promised a celebratory return. “We have to begin the process of welcoming our soldiers home,” Hruska said.

Terry Edmunds, director of communications for State Farm Insurance Cos.’ Military Affinity Group, said his group plans to decorate the town ahead of the soldiers’ arrival.

“The night before, we’re going up and down the entire parade route and putting yellow ribbons up,” Edmunds said.

Members of the affinity group also will supply snacks and soft drinks for soldiers at the Army National Guard facility on South Main Street, Edmunds said. And at some point in the near future, the group members will cook a hot breakfast for those soldiers.

Edmunds, a Vietnam veteran, said he is one of more than 300 State Farm employees who work in Bloomington and are involved in the affinity group. He said he and fellow Vietnam veterans weren’t treated well on their return home 37 years ago, and he doesn’t want to see such treatment for today’s soldiers.

Latonya Harris, coordinator for the Family Readiness Group and wife of a soldier now in Iraq, said friends and relatives have given a lot of support to the group for military families since the unit’s deployment. And there is excitement and a little anxiety among those families as the soldiers prepare to return, she said.

Harris’ husband, Staff Sgt. Sean Harris, is on his second deployment, she said. He was first deployed with a Chicago-based unit in 2003 and 2004.