Latest news with #IllinoisArmyNationalGuard
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Rockford honors fallen servicemen with solemn Memorial Day ceremony
ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — There wasn't a dry eye in the house at a solemn remembrance ceremony at Veterans Memorial Hall, honoring loved ones, friends, and other servicemen and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice. 'Memorial Day is not just a holiday. It is a solemn reminder of the sacrifices made by those who wore the uniform. These heroes defended our freedoms and never returned home,' said Winnebago County Chairman Joseph Chiarelli. The service followed Rockford's annual Memorial Day Parade through downtown. 'It's so important to honor those who have lost their lives, who gave up their life for our freedoms and to be able to honor them is what we should be doing every day. So hopefully today, everyone can take a moment to remember what it costs for freedom,' Chiarelli said. 'I think what moves me, especially this morning, is my little daughter gave me a note that said, Thank you for your service and please don't go away to the army that long again. And I kind of teared up a little bit. And then it made me think of all the fathers and mothers and even brothers and sisters who didn't come home back to their families,' said 2nd Ward Ald. Jonathan Logeman, who also serves with the Illinois Army National Guard. 'When you think about the solemn nature of the sacrifice that we make, being home from our families or even possibly making the ultimate sacrifice, it just makes me so proud to be a part of the United States Army. Especially on a day when we think about those who did pay that ultimate sacrifice,' Logeman continued. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Miami Herald
24-05-2025
- General
- Miami Herald
Her cellphone vanished in a lethal drone strike. Then came a ‘miracle'
ATLANTA - An iPhone with a cartoony, angel-winged teddy bear on its case kept catching the soldier's eye. The phone was stashed in the closet of a back room in what amounted to a lost-and-found locker at a remote U.S. military outpost in the Jordanian desert. Staff Sgt. Zachary Winthers of the Illinois Army National Guard had been stationed since last summer at a base known as Tower 22. He worked in the installation's "mayor's cell," or town hall, tasked with making sure troops had daily necessities, meals, sleeping quarters. The place was a collecting point, too, for unclaimed items. Winthers first noticed the curious iPhone while he was cleaning up. It had been there, he figured, "for God knows how long." It bothered him much of the nine months he was there. No one seemed to know where the phone came from. He wanted to charge it, turn it on, see whose it was. But no one had the proper charging cable. And it wasn't as if he could pop over and buy one somewhere along the Syrian and Iraqi borders. Winthers posted occasional messages to his comrades: Hey, we found a phone. See if it's yours. The phone should not have been hard to recognize. Its cover was a Casetify-brand "Angel Bear" impact case. Its backside bore a haloed teddy bear aloft in puffy clouds, clutching a tiny heart that read, "Just Do You." In beefier print, the cover declared: "I Don't Care!! What You Think of Me, Baby." Below that, in smaller type, it read, "You're the main character in your life. … Focus your energy on making yourself happy." As the end of Winthers' deployment neared in April, the phone was still unclaimed. "It felt like someone's personal device," Winthers, 29, would say. "Phones have memories." Before he shipped out, he had an idea. He got the OK from his first sergeant to take the phone home and try to power it up. "If anything," the first sergeant told him, "it's like a good Samaritan." Winthers said, "If someone found my phone, I would want someone to try to do everything to return it." _____ More than a year earlier, on the night of Jan. 28, 2024, about six months before Winthers arrived in the desert, Iranian-backed militants attacked Tower 22. A drone bombed the barracks. Three Army reservists from Georgia were killed: Sgt. Breonna A. Moffett, 23, of Savannah; Sgt. William J. Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, and Sgt. Kennedy L. Sanders, 24, of Waycross. More than two dozen other troops were injured. The episode marked the worst strike on American service members since the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021. The Georgians' deaths hit hard in their home state. Their funerals made front-page news. Sanders' parents were especially forthcoming with news reporters. Shawn Sanders, her father, and Oneida Oliver-Sanders, her mother, opened their home and answered their phones, telling all who cared to listen about their daughter's life. President Joe Biden called to express his condolences. Kennedy Sanders, in her hometown of 14,000 residents at the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, had been a standout soccer, softball and basketball player. She enrolled at Valdosta State University but left school and later joined the Army reserves. While home and between deployments to Africa and the Middle East, she worked as a volunteer community basketball coach. She had jobs at the local elections office, at a pharmacy and at the home-improvement store Lowe's, where in 2022 she was employee of the year. After the reserves, she dreamed of a career in radiology. In the weeks following her death, the Army shipped home her belongings. Her boots arrived, her dog tags, too, which her father treasures. Other personal effects were also sent. But something was never sent. Her iPhone. _____ The explosion had hurtled Kennedy Sanders' body onto the roof of the dorm where she slept. Chances were, her phone had been obliterated. The Army told her parents as much. "I was upset," her father recalled. Shawn Sanders, a former Marine, wanted his daughter's selfies, her photos, her videos. They offered more to remember her by. Smartphones are where our electronic devices and our personalities intertwine. Our phones, weird as it may sound, kind of are us. They're personal journals in every font, meme and emoji imaginable. They're 3D diaries, digital scrapbooks of our existence. There were times Oliver-Sanders needed fresh images of her daughter. At times in the months after Sanders was killed, her mother was obsessed by a photograph of her in her casket. Oliver-Sanders sat and stared at the picture. Sometimes all day. "In disbelief," she said. For Shawn Sanders, the days after his daughter's death felt like he was, as he put it, "underwater." Now, he said, some days come with tears of joy. Other days it's pure grief. But even since before Sanders' funeral, her folks have found comfortin their hometown's embrace. "It's an overwhelming sense of honor and respect for our daughter and for our family," Oliver-Sanders said. "People do look to us as the example for grieving parents." A stretch of the street in front of their house has been renamed Kennedy L. Sanders Way. A mural of Sanders gazing out over Tebeau Street from the front wall of Kings Washerette features a brilliant American flag and a gigantic eagle clutching a Purple Heart. Whenever Oliver-Sanders rides past the mural, she says hello and refers to her late daughter by her nickname. "Hey, Munch," she'll say, which is short for "Munchkin." As this Memorial Day approached, Oliver-Sanders gathered art materials. Oliver-Sanders, a past longtime member of the Ware County Board of Education, collected hundreds of sheets of purple construction paper, her daughter's favorite color. Oliver-Sanders packaged them in plastic baggies with copies of pictures of Sanders and handfuls of children's stickers and glue-on stars for a project created for pupils at Ruskin Elementary, which Sanders attended as a child. "Kennedy Kits," they're called. The idea is for kids to craft framable, patriotic artwork. "A lot of kids don't know what Memorial Day is and what it means," Oliver-Sanders said. "It's a way to shine a light on what it's really about." On a recent morning, the Sanderses showed up at another school, this one on the outskirts of Waycross. At Waresboro Elementary, the couple stood onstage during the fourth-grade's honors day ceremony to present the Sgt. Kennedy L. Sanders True Hero Award. The distinction goes to a child at each grade level who exemplifies good citizenship, makes good grades and who behaves, is athletic and dependable. The fourth-grade winner was a blond-haired boy whose teacher described him as someone who "consistently goes out of his way to help others. A true friend to everyone, who is always a step ahead." As the white-ribboned award medal was presented, along with $25, Shawn Sanders shook the boy's hand and teared up. _____ An hour or so after dinner on May 6, Zach Winthers was in his parents' kitchen. Winthers had arrived home to North Aurora, Illinois, in mid-April. His deployment to Jordan had been his second overseas assignment. He had joined the military at age 19 after graduating from Kaneland High, a school surrounded by cornfields about an hour west of downtown Chicago. "I'm a simple guy," he said. He studies biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He did some of his Army training in Georgia, near Augusta. Winthers likes hiking, camping, boating, fishing. He calls himself "a gym rat." He's into strength training. For fun he plays "Magic: The Gathering," a dueling card game of spells and wizardry. He's a huge "Lord of the Rings" fan. He hopes to work in forensics, perhaps for the FBI or the CIA. On that night early this month in his family's kitchen early, the mystery cellphone he had brought home from Jordan was charged. He switched it on. It had a passcode. Locked. But when Winthers tapped the phone's emergency contacts, they opened. He noticed the name of the phone's owner, Kennedy Sanders, but it didn't dawn on him who she was. Sure, he had seen a memorial at Tower 22 with her name on it, but he hadn't been at the base then. The name didn't ring a bell. The phone's contacts were all nicknames. The first two: "Mama Bear" and "Papa Bear." Winthers assumed they were Sanders' parents. Next to each nickname were phone numbers. Winthers, on his own phone, typed in the number next to "Mama Bear." It had a 912 area code. Southeastern Georgia. The phone rang. Oliver-Sanders answered. Winthers said who he was and asked if she knew a Kennedy Sanders. "Does this name sound familiar?" "That's my daughter," Oliver-Sanders said, wary of what might come next. She asked how Winthers got her number. Winthers read aloud the names of the emergency contacts, "Mama Bear … Papa Bear …" "That's her phone," Oliver-Sanders said. She was floored. Winthers, still unaware of who Kennedy Sanders was, asked her mother if Sanders was still on active duty and if he might mail her phone to her. Oliver-Sanders informed him that she had been killed in action, in a drone strike. Winthers' stomach sank. He felt horrible, shocked. As soon as Oliver-Sanders told him, he remembered. He thought, "Oh, my gosh, that's right." He offered his condolences and explained how he came to have the phone. But how it made it to the lost-and-found closet, unscathed, he had not a clue. No one does. Winthers' father, stepmother and sister had been in the kitchen listening in the background to the call. They were speechless. "What are the frickin' chances?" they wondered. "This is surreal." The next day, Winthers shipped it to Waycross. Shawn Sanders later said, "It couldn't be delivered fast enough." _____ A while back, a friend of Sanders stationed at Tower 22 sent Sanders' parents another phone. Two phones actually. They're toys. String phones that Sanders and Breonna Moffett made using Campbell's Soup cans. "That's how bored they were out there," Oliver-Sanders said. While her daughter's iPhone was on its way from Illinois, she informed some of Sanders' fellow soldiers - "battle buddies," she calls them - that it had been found, and that it worked. As a wise mother might, she asked if there was anything she should, um, steer clear of reading. Nope, they said. "All you're going to do is laugh." Moffett's father, Bernard, who has come to know Sanders' dad, joked with Shawn Sanders when he heard the phone was recovered, telling him, "Be careful, man, you might see something there you don't want to see." When the phone arrived and the Sanderses turned it on, a relative informed them of the passcode, a variation of her June 1999 birth date. In the phone were videos of Sanders and her pals, images that her folks had never seen and probably never would have seen. "She recorded everything," her mother said. "You know this generation. They record everything." There were glimpses of her everyday life. Her cutting up with friends. Her being … herself. Her being the daughter they raised her to be. "That's meaningful to me. It's more than a gift," her dad said. "It's a piece of her that even we didn't get to see. She was a good girl." It was a portal of sorts. They saw the last message she ever sent, part of a three-way chat with Moffett and another friend at the base: "I can't wait to go to Target when we get home." There was video of her and Moffett playing with those silly toy phones. "Now," Oliver-Sanders said, "I can look at her phone and see video of them actually making them." The Sanderses also read again conversations she'd had with her father about staying the course when it came to climbing the ranks, being promoted. "It's a modern-day miracle," Oliver-Sanders said of the phone and Winthers' efforts to return it. "Thank God he thought enough to bring it back and not just leave it over there." Other than his family, Winthers has told only a couple of people about returning the phone. "I don't like to boast," he said. There was one last gesture, though. He sent Sanders' parents something else. Something they are proud to share. They keep it on display at their house in a curio cabinet with some of Sanders' crossword puzzle and sudoku books, a mood board and other belongings from her locker. And, yes, it's in there with those toy soup-can phones. With good reason. It's a card with a handwritten a message from Winthers about her very real phone: "I am truly sorry that it took so long for her phone to find its way back to you. Please know that returning it to you was very important to me, and it was an honor to do so. Her sacrifice, service and memory will never be forgotten." Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
CBC
27-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Organizer of trans history conference in Canada says U.S. participants now afraid to cross the border
Social Sharing The chair of transgender studies at the University of Victoria is worried about attendance at this year's Moving Trans History Forward conference, with expectations of a 40 per cent drop in numbers. Aaron Devor says potential U.S. attendees are reluctant to cross the border — not because of what might happen when they enter Canada, but what could happen when they try to return to the United States. He says the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump sent a chill through the trans community in January with an executive order that the federal government recognizes two sexes, male and female, that cannot change and are an "immutable biological classification" from conception. Devor says the biennial trans history conference that begins Thursday was hoping for 500 attendees based on past events, but only about 300 are now expected. "The difference, I attribute almost entirely to Americans being afraid to leave their own country," said Devor, who is the founder and host of the conferences. WATCH | Transgender Americans feel unsafe following Trump changes: Trans Americans look to Canada for safety after Trump's re-election 2 months ago Duration 7:51 Trump's executive order says that all government-issued identification, including passports and visas, must "accurately reflect the holder's sex." The U.S. State Department has said it will stop issuing travel documents with the "X" gender marker preferred by many non-binary people, and it will only issue passports with an "M" or "F" sex marker matching the person's "biological sex" at birth. "What I see has changed in light of the Trump administration and the actions that have been taken by the Trump administration is that trans-plus people from the U.S. are very nervous about crossing into Canada to come to the conference because they have to return to the United States," said Devor. The conference, which is running until Sunday, involves activists, academics, and artists from across the world, the university says, with more than 100 guests making presentations. The organizers say the event addresses "both our history and the crucial issues that impact us today and into the future — locally, nationally, and globally." Retired U.S. lieutenant colonel to speak American philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, who gave a foundational gift to help start the chair in transgender studies at the University of Victoria, is scheduled as a speaker on Thursday night. Prtizker is a retired as a lieutenant colonel from the Illinois Army National Guard who identified herself as transgender in 2013. She has been critical of Trump's attempts to ban transgender troops from serving in the military, telling PBS program Chicago Tonight this week that it would cause chaos and destroy morale. Immigration lawyer Adrienne Smith, who has been invited as a panel speaker at the conference, said the Trump administration had spread misinformation and transphobia, leaving members of the trans community feeling very unsafe. "And I think it's important to note that trans people have always been afraid. We have always lived in the shadow of danger, but that danger is much bigger and much closer now," said Smith. She applauded the conference for allowing attendance by video this year for the first time. The first conference of Moving Trans History Forward was held at the university in 2014 with around 100 activists and researchers attending the event. Devor said the context of this year's conference had shifted, with "so much anti-trans rhetoric and organizing." "And we are facing the president of the most powerful nation in the world, who is trying to pretend that trans people do not exist at all, and doing his best to erase any evidence that trans people exist," said Devor. Legal centre overwhelmed with immigration requests Smith, who is the litigation director at Catherine White Holman Wellness Centre, which provides free legal services in Vancouver, said their office has been overwhelmed with immigration requests from trans people hoping to leave the United States and come to Canada. But Smith said there are few immigration pathways available for them. She said the Trump administration wanted trans people to be afraid and withdraw from public life. "And not go to important things like a conference where we can talk about research and human rights, not have us gather, not have us know where each other is, and really to separate us from our community," said Smith. "It's intentional and it's working."
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Sen. Tammy Duckworth's lived experience a catalyst for change in Illinois, across the country
For Tammy Duckworth, the personal and the political are intertwined. The junior U.S. senator from Illinois has had a life marked by not only overcoming obstacles, but shaping a sharp vision from them. She's wielded her own life experiences to make history on the Senate floor, speaking up – often with firsthand experience – for the issues she cares about. In 2004, Duckworth was deployed to Iraq as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot for the Illinois Army National Guard, where she stood among the first women in the Army to fly combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom. On Nov. 12, 2004, a rocket-propelled grenade shot down her helicopter, exploding in her lap. She lost both her legs and partial use of her right arm. But after a year of recovery, she became director of the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs where she helped create a tax credit for employers that hire veterans, developed programs to improve access to housing and health care and established the nation's first 24-hour veteran crisis hotline. Duckworth later served as former President Barack Obama's assistant secretary of veteran affairs, addressing issues affecting women and Native American veterans. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016, making her the first disabled woman to serve in Congress. Rising through the ranks of the military as a young woman, she put off having children until she was 50 to prioritize her career. After a series of in-vitro fertilization treatments, she welcomed her daughter Abigail in 2014 and another daughter, Maile Pearl, in 2018. Duckworth made history that year as the first senator to give birth while in office. She brought her 10-day-old newborn onto the Senate floor during a vote, a decision that sparked a rule change which now allows parents to bring infants onto the Senate floor to fulfill both parenting and political duties. She remembers traveling between Illinois and Washington twice a week while breastfeeding. Finding appropriate places to pump breast milk proved difficult, so Duckworth pushed a five-year campaign, the Friendly Airports for Mothers Improvement Act, that mandated lactation rooms in airports and hospitals starting in 2020. She's also pushed to expand access to fertility treatment nationwide through her Right to IVF Act, introduced in the Senate last year. For her accomplishments in reproductive rights, veterans issues and disability advocacy, Duckworth has been named USA TODAY's Women of the Year honoree from Illinois. This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity. During COVID, I was writing letters to my daughters to talk about the importance of service to them, and it ended up being a book. The title of my book is 'Every Day is a Gift,' and that's how I feel about people who have paved the way for me. I feel like I've been given gifts along the way. When my dad had been unemployed in his 50s for over five years and we were nearly two days away from being homeless, it was an American Legion call so that we would actually have a place to stay. It was Vietnam veterans who were still flying helicopters in the reserve unit at Naval Air Station, Glenview. I'm in my 20s, I show up at this helicopter, I'm the only woman there and I'm a cadet. These Vietnam veterans took me under their wing. And then, of course, here at the Senate, I wouldn't have gotten here were it not for Dick Durbin. He saw me in the hospital when I was wounded, and he looked past the wheelchair. He looked past my race, my age, my gender, and he saw someone who was hungry to continue to serve my country. 2024: Dr. Tamara Olt is USA TODAY Women of the Year honoree for Illinois I probably have several buckets. Obviously, what first motivated me was veterans issues, so it was everything I did in Illinois, and we were the first state in the country to do a lot of things. We were the first to have a 24-hour mental health crisis hotline for veterans. Even before the V.A. had a 24-hour hotline, we implemented one back in 2007. Illinois is the first to implement my program that allows veterans and small business owners access to federal property for free. I've worked a lot on veteran homelessness, which has been a real crusade of mine for a long time. One moment that brings a smile to my face is every time I'm in an airport and I see one of those lactation pods or lactation rooms. That's my law. I did that. It makes a difference for the most vulnerable, our babies, and I get to see one every time I go through an airport, which is, you know, a couple times a week. I am trying to teach both my daughters. We've been having this conversation. What I tell them is, 'Courage is not the absence of fear.' When I served in the military, I had to do a lot of things that were scary. Courage comes from finding something scary, but doing it anyway. It's not the absence of fear. It's actually the presence of fear but moving forward anyway. 2023: 'Love heals': How a mantra propels Springfield's Rev. Margaret Ann Jessup forward I try to assume that the other person loves this country as much as I do. Maybe we don't all have the same perspective on the problem, which is probably why we don't have the same answers. You don't win without compromising; an 80% solution is better than a 0%. Maybe there's a way to find a middle ground. Right now and every day in my job, I try to look back to what Dick Durbin has done or Paul Simon has done in the past, this idea that we all need water, clean water. Clean air. So trying to look at some of the folks who may have been dealbreakers in the past or helped guide me at this time when it's pretty partisan. It's pretty difficult here in Washington right now, and I'm trying to look back to the folks who were able to get things done in previous areas and maybe learn from them. Of course, I'm happy it's not a bad group to look up to. 2022: Meet Dr. Ngozi Ezike, a 'woman who saved lives and changed (Illinois) for the better' This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Tammy Duckworth is USA TODAY's Women of the Year honoree for Illinois
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Illinois bill would require schools to have more military recruitment events
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WCIA) — Illinois public high schools may hold more military recruitment events thanks to a bill in the state capitol. Rep. Mike Coffey (R-Springfield) filed a bill earlier this month that would amend the School Code to require school boards to invite recruiters from branches of the armed forces to present on high school campuses annually. Bill aims to reform Illinois' child incarceration system Coffey said students should know more information on serving to make the best decision for them after high school. 'I think it's important we provide high school students with more opportunities to gain understanding of joining the military and the benefits that come from serving the Illinois armed forces,' Coffey said. 'Students can learn about the benefits that veterans receive such as property tax exemptions, education and tuition assistance, as well as hunting, fishing licenses and state park camping privileges.' The bill would require the invites to be for both the U.S. armed forces and the Illinois armed forces, which includes the Illinois Air National Guard, the Illinois Army National Guard, and the Illinois Department of Military Affairs. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
