We're taking a moment to recognize our own local Homecoming hero, Lt. Brian Foster, who's away from his neighborhood and family while serving our country as part of the Indiana Army National Guard.He left Jan. 2 with about 4,000 other Guardsmen, and is spending a couple months at Ft. Stewart, Georgia before leaving for Kuwait. His unit will ultimately end up doing convoy security operations near Baghdad, Iraq and he currently expects to be back at the very end of 2008, or possibly early 2009.
UPDATE: Brian arrived in Kuwait this week - on Wednesday, Feb. 20. From the previous writeup, appears that earlier than planned. He writes to Kim that he arrived safely, making a stop in Budapest and having an overly uneventful trip. However, they landed in a sandstorm and the place has a constant haze over it and doesn't smell the greatest!
Brian serves as an Executive Officer (XO) - essentially the second in command responsible for handling all logistical issues for his unit, the B Troop, 1-152 (CAV) RSTA. He handles inventory, personnel, and equipment movement, as well.
"Nevertheless, there is always a huge learning curve when you get into any position... " he said. "I'm working with a lot of weapons systems I didn't know before and a lot of fresh tactics from the lessons learned in Iraq right now."
Brian's military service story is one of a post-9/11 world. He recalls joining in 2003 because of those horrific events, noting that he'd joined earlier at age 34 but didn't serve and always felt guilty for not serving actively. Instead, he was able to build a family with his wife, Kim, who he met in college at Indiana University. They've been together for 15 years and married for 11, and together have three kids: Samantha, 9, Colleen, 7, and Kyle, 3. You may know them from seeing their smiling faces and bright red hair up on Legacy Blvd, where they live. Brian's civil job is working in Indy as a Supplemental Waste Manager for Covanta Energy, which runs the Waste-to-Energy facility (i.e. trash burner). He works with special destructions and waste disposal for them.
Please take a moment to say a prayer in thanks and recognition of our neighbor, Brian. We wish him and his family well, and hope they all know our thoughts our with them and all the troops serving.
When sharing his story, Brian mentioned that he looks forward to keeping up on neighborhood issues and happenings through the Homecoming blog - he has it bookmarked, and hopes to be able to access it overseas. For those interested, we have the address if you want to send any mail or email to Brian. Give Mike Hoskins an email shout to get this (we didn't want to post so any stranger or potential spammer could get the details). Of course, Kim also has those details and is the one keeping us up to date.
So, here's to keeping him close to home while far from it. We'll keep you posted, and to echo your email's parting words: "Take care, and God Bless."
