SIERRA VISTA, Ariz — Thanksgiving is a time to show you are grateful for the things in your life—and that can include gratitude for the people who join the military to serve and protect our country. For several years Fort Huachuca has matched soldiers with families willing to invite those soldiers to Thanksgiving dinner. KGUN9 got to see what happened when a family adopted some soldiers.
Thanksgiving is a holiday about home. But people in the military often can't be home for the holidays. That's why a Sierra Vista family has adopted some Fort Huachuca soldiers for Thanksgiving dinner.
Thanksgiving, and the meal that goes with it are a celebration of family but for young soldiers away from home, this can be a lonely day.
Private First Class Leagan Mire-Moran says the day could have been: “Very boring, very, very boring. Probably a lot of sitting around in our room. Maybe going down to the defect, watch or something like that, sir. But overall, just another boring day.”
But Fort Huachuca soldiers Mire-Moran and Benjamin Leeman have a better way to spend the day. Ray and Karen Lamy have adopted them for Thanksgiving dinner. Adopting soldiers has been their tradition for the last five years, except for a one year break for COVID.
Their own ties to the military led them to welcome these special guests. Karen’s parents met while they were serving in World War Two. Ray was a soldier for ten years and a long list of their children and grandchildren stepped up to serve our country.
“So we've always had them in our lives. And came to a point that we wanted to do a little more for other other people and Karen found this ad, where you could adopt a soldier for Thanksgiving. We thought that's great, because who wants to be away from home when they can be with a family?”
After the Army, Ray became a professional chef, so he got enlisted to cook most of the feast.
Benjamin Leeman says having a great meal, with a friendly family, is a welcome break from Army life.
“This is my first time being at Thanksgiving without my actual family at home. So it's a little different for me, and I think it's a great opportunity to focus on just stop being a soldier for a day interacting with civilians.”
Karen says when they learned about Fort Huachuca’s adopt a soldier program they knew right away they wanted to join in.
Now she keeps a map noting the home states of every soldier who’s been their guest.
“And this is all color coded. And these were our first two soldiers from Oregon and California. And these are the two soldiers we have today from Maine and Louisiana. And all the other ones in between.”
And they say they’d like to keep bringing soldiers home for Thanksgiving until every state on that map is filled in.
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