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thedrifter
09-12-06, 07:01 AM
Pacifica Military Moms hold rally for troops
By Julia Scott, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area

PACIFICA — Even before her son, David, joined the Marines, Lori Bowie-Parrish made a point of commemorating 9/11 on a downtown street corner with a poster and a flag. It didn't matter to her that she was standing alone.

"I see so many people who are not outwardly patriotic," she said. "It seems like we're a silent majority, and we should get out there to make people aware there is a war going on."

Four years after she started, Bowie-Parrish has been joined on the street corner by several other women who have children in the military and some locals who support them. They hold signs pasted with photos of their sons and wave at cars that honk their support.

One passerby yells, "War criminals!"

A man holding a flag on the corner responds: "Stick it up your a—!"

Although she was proud of David's decision to join the Marines two years ago, Bowie-Parrish had trouble sleeping ever since he was deployed to western Iraq.

"I'm a wreck. This is the only thing that's keeping me together," she said.

An important source of support is the Pacifica Military Moms, a patriotic network of women with children enrolled in the military who have informal monthly get-togethers and collect items to send to the troops abroad.

For Jennifer Weyant's two eldest sons, joining the Army in 2004 was a natural reaction to the events of 9/11 and the need to prevent terrorists from striking the U.S. again.

Even though some of the justifications the Bush administration offered for invading Iraq have proven untrue, the need to defend the U.S. has never changed, she said.

"I know that Saddam Hussein wasn't connected with al-Qaida, but it was right to take him out," said Weyant, who added that her then-teenage son and daughter had planned to join the military when they graduated from high school.

Other Pacifica Military Moms chose not to attend the street-corner rally on Monday because of the feelings it would have stirred up.

"I'm not thinking about (9/11) at all. I'm just keeping myself busy, trying not to think about it," said Debbie Smyser, whose 20-year-old son, Joe Quirarte, pre-enlisted in the Army when he was 17. He is in Afghanistan, where his tour of duty was recently extended until the end of November.

The events of 9/11 affected Quirarte deeply, said Smyser.

"It made him want to go even more. He was totally torn inside," she said. "It was like, 'I've got to do something, let's go.'"

While waiting for Quirarte to return, Smyser has busied herself collecting items for hundreds of care packages to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has established collection bins at several stores in the Eureka Shopping Center in Pacifica's Sharp Park district and at the Pacifica Community Center on Crespi Drive. Snack foods and hygiene products are especially popular, she said.

The anniversary of 9/11 had great meaning for Pacifica Mayor Sue Digre, one of the founding members of the Military Moms, whose husband Erick booked a flight to Manhattan a few hours after the terrorist attacks.

He was soon sifting through the debris of the Twin Towers with a team of firemen; their daughter Colleen and son Michael followed him to New York shortly after.

"There were only parts — a finger. Powder. There were no human beings. It was liquefaction," said Digre.

Digre's two eldest sons, Michael and Sean, were both reservists who were called up for active duty after 9/11. Michael has since completed two tours of duty in Iraq as a rigger in the Marines. Sean is training to be a medic at a base in North Carolina.

Monday's anniversary was a tough one for Digre, who did not attend the patriotic rally.

"I was driving (today) and I just started bawling," she confessed. "It was the images of 9/11, the images on TV, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine ... it just hit me. How do you get peace out of this mess?"

To learn more about the Pacifica Military Moms contact Debbie Smyser at pacificamilitarymoms@yahoo.com.

Staff writer Julia Scott can be reached at (650) 348-4340 or at jscott@sanmateocountytimes.com.

Ellie