Three months ago, Eric Roles, 25, a Baltimore Poly Tech and West Point graduate, landed in Iraq for his first deployment. His mother, Trudi, and father, Nick, who live on the Baltimore City/County line in Brooklyn, asked the platoon leader the obvious questions: “What do you need? What can we send you?”
The 500 soccer balls Lt. Roles eventually requested started arriving a couple weeks later.
“Eric said he had everything he needed,” Trudi Roles said. “But he asked if we could mail things for the kids there. There were so many kids, he said, and they didn?t have anything.”
Initially, the family, including his fiancee, Virginia Peterson, mailed crayons and coloring books. Then, a month into his tour, Roles, stationed near Baghdad, saw kids clamoring around a U.S. serviceman kicking a soccer ball. Immediately, he began a new mission.
“Eric pitched the idea of sending soccer balls in an instant message to his mother,” Peterson said. “She posted information on the family?s Web site and the reaction has really surprised Eric.”
Roles? sisters, Angie, 27, in San Francisco, and Jackie, 23, at Old Dominion University, got involved. A cousin bought 150 balls on eBay. Support was enlisted from friends and local sporting goods stores, and now his mother and fiancee are packaging cleats, jerseys, socks, shorts ? and air pumps ? with the 15-20 balls they box every few days.
Roles wrote that his squad keeps a pile of soccer balls in their armored vehicle and distributes as many as they can. In a recent e-mail, he recounted “trading” five soccer balls to local kids for four marbles and an apple.
“Whenever we give a ball away, we always try to spend a few minutes playing around with the Iraqi kids or adults,” Roles wrote. “Not an easy task when you are wearing 60 pounds of armor, ammunition, and carrying radios and rifles, not to mention you are trying to find and kill insurgents.”
The family just surpassed Roles? original request of 500 balls this week, but Trudy Roles would like to send 5,000 by the time her son?s tour ends in December.
