Guest Editorials : Being there
Posted on Thursday, October 9, 2008
War ? Not a great thing. The ability to see your son being born, even while you're thousands of miles away at war ? Now that's One Great Thing. For the first time ever at Mercy Medical Center in Rogers, a family was connected via satellite for the birth of a child. Matt Corp, a Prairie Grove resident, watched from Baghdad as his wife, Joni, gave birth to their son, Matthew Dale Warren Corp, on Wednesday. "It was great pay-per-view," Corp later quipped, during a video conference set up for the media. Corp, a combat medic with the Arkansas National Guard, got to see the birth of his second child thanks to Freedom Calls Foundation, a charity that connects troops overseas with their loved ones at home. "It meant more than anything to me," Corp said. There once was a time when a person who went off to war didn't have the option of talking to, much less seeing, his family again until he returned home. Last week's story about the Corp family demonstrates how far technology has brought us. We wish Corp could have had the chance to be there in person when his son was born, but at least he got to witness it as it happened. A video recording isn't quite the same. Our congratulations and best wishes go out to the Corp family. Kudos to the Freedom Calls Foundation for arranging this. The foundation, which also allows soldiers overseas to witness birthdays, weddings and graduations, exists solely on donations.
- Benton County Daily Record
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