Blanket for Deployed Daddy back home with new baby
Lt. Joshua Urness of Kittitas holds his Blanket for Deployed Daddies close to his chest, demonstrating to other U.S. Army soldiers what they are to do with one of these special blankets.
MATTAWA - It's mission accomplished for Wahluke High School's Francisco Mejia and his Knit Wits classmates.
A Blanket for Deployed Daddies they knitted has spent time with a war zone-deployed father and is now in the soldier's new baby's crib.
Blankets for Deployed Daddies is a Colorado organization that seeks to help deployed fathers have a smooth reunion with new babies when they return from Iraq or Afghanistan.
The blankets are made by individuals, including high school students in Wahluke's 21st Century Program. They are part of Lori Barlow's Knit Wits knitting class.
The blankets are shipped to war zones, where daddies sleep with them and carry them under their uniforms. The idea is to transfer the soldier's scent onto the blanket.
After a couple of weeks, the soldier puts the blanket in a sealed plastic bag and ships it home. It is then placed in the baby's crib until Daddy gets home.
"According to research, the child will learn the scent of his or her father after the father sleeps with or carries the blanket," 21st Century Program site director Jay Scott said.
The blanket made by Mejia and his mates is the first one produced by Wahluke students. It went to 1st Lt. Joshua Urness of Kittitas, who is deployed at Ft. Leatherneck in Afghanistan. He has returned it, and it was placed in his two-month-old baby's crib on May 16.
"He's seen the baby," 21st Century site director Jay Scott said. "He got to come home three days for the birth. Hopefully the blanket will help the baby recognize him when they reunite."
Wahluke 21st Century students have made half a dozen blankets. The rest will be shipped out in the near future.
Urness was chosen for the first blanket because the school already has a relationship with him through the New Years for Troops drive. He was chosen also because his mother, Holly Urness, is a teacher at Wahluke.
"The students have shown big hearts in giving this year to all of the fund-raisers the 21st Century Program has partnered with or participated in," Scott said. "I hope next year brings even higher teacher, student and parent involvement."