Community helps as Guardsman serves

I am writing after the past few weeks of preparing to and then sending my husband off to the war in Iraq. He is a member of the 116th engineer battalion of the Idaho Army National Guard.

Over the past few weeks as I have looked at our life and all that was happening and in some cases all that was going wrong with it I came to realize how fortunate we are to live in this community. We are surrounded in Sandpoint by people who truly care. I have so many thank yous to express and felt that many of them deserved to be shared.

First and foremost, thank you to our family and friends for all they have done to help us through, it will never be forgotten. I would like to thank my husband Mark's employers at Litehouse for their patience and understanding. His coworkers were very supportive, especially his supervisor John Ambrose. John always went the extra mile and his introduction to Jess at Kootenai Church was a blessing.

Jess at Kootenai Church you have my heartfelt thank you for being there for Mark, your talks were inspiring and touching and helped him through what he has to do. You are a man of true faith and I look forward to meeting you when Mark comes home. I send another very heartfelt thank you to the staff at Washington School. Mrs. Burright, Mrs. Delavern and especially, Tom Prez, you all helped my younger children deal with a very heavy issue and showed compassion and understanding.

Coach Dorris at Sandpoint High School, thank you for loaning out your football tapes from last year so that Mark could watch them. He missed all but one game last year because of his last deployment and will miss the entire season again this year. It meant a lot and we had fun watching them.

Thank you to our neighbors John and Sue Elsa. They have been over the past two years, confidants and protectors and have shown our family much consideration and caring. They know what "neighbor" means.

Thank you to Gloria and the Kiwanis club for the generous use of Mirror Lake. During our last week together we spent a couple days out at Mirror Lake relaxing and enjoying our family. It was wonderful and created many happy memories. We truly appreciated the privilege of having the lake to ourselves.

I would also like to thank the owners and crew at Ivano's. We had family come in from California to say good-bye to Mark and we all went to Ivano's for a goodbye meal together. They treated us like royalty and made our meal very special and memorable. Thank you so much.

Mark's dentist, Dr. Harris, and his staff went way above and beyond working time off and lunch hours to see that Mark got all of his dental work done before he had to leave. We truly appreciated it and would recommend them to anyone. It is a privilege to live in a town where "community" is more than a word.

My biggest most heartfelt thank you, however, goes to my husband for being the man he is. He is our hero and has taught us a lot about commitment and bravery. Thank you for being my husband and the father of my children. Please know that my love travels with you anywhere.

JENNIFER HEPINSTALL