Letters of Arabia : Troops’ Replies Give Students an Up-Close Look at the Mideast

Students in Ventura County who have been writing letters to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia are beginning to get some grateful responses from their military pen pals.

And, in the process, they are making some new friends.

Without knowing the name of any individual soldier, Heather Dempster, a 16-year-old junior at Thousand Oaks High School, wrote a letter to Saudi Arabia for the U.S. military to distribute.

Not only did she get a reply--from Marine Lance Cpl. Kevin Kishner--she received an invitation from Kishner’s mother in San Luis Obispo to have dinner with the family on Nov. 16.

“I was really excited,” said Heather, who is planning to accept the invitation. “And I was surprised I received something like this back.”

Little by little, students at Thousand Oaks High and Acacia Elementary School in Thousand Oaks, who have written to U.S. soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia during the last few weeks, are getting replies.

For these students, the troops are no longer just a large group of khaki-clad men and women in a faraway desert, glimpsed on evening news broadcasts.

They now have names--like Marine Lance Cpl. Frankie Sellner of Sleepy Eye, Minn., a 24-year-old combat motorcycle messenger who confessed to Acacia sixth-grader Rhonda Nesheiwat that he worries about getting lost in the Saudi desert.

Marine Sgt. G.W. Clites told Thousand Oaks High cheerleader Niki Zewe that he used to date a cheerleader; and Jeffery Bauc, 20, also a Marine lance corporal, wrote to Erin Larisey of Acacia that he shared her love for reading and encouraged her to pursue her dream to be a writer.

“When I read those letters I started to cry,” Acacia Principal Gail Lowe said.

Several pupils in Anne Graham’s sixth-grade class at Acacia chose to send letters to the troops as part of their “free-write” English assignment. So far, 10 responses have been received.

“It’s kind of exciting to get a letter from there,” said 11-year-old Rhonda, who noted that she has responded to Sellner’s letter.

Graham said the responses have been good incentives for students to write and that they have stimulated an interest in Saudi Arabia.

At Thousand Oaks High, the 175 sophomores and juniors in Ellen Droshe’s history classes were required to write to the troops.

“I feel, as history teachers, we have a responsibility to make students aware of civics--whether we feel it’s wrong or right to be there,” Droshe said.

The responses--about 20 so far--have been received with great enthusiasm by the students, who read them aloud in class, Droshe said. And they are often eye-openers about dramatic cultural differences between the Arabian peninsula and the United States.

“I found out that men cannot speak with women in public, and there’s a public beating if you get three speeding tickets,” Heather said. “I didn’t think they would take it that far.”

Students at both schools were allowed to write whatever they wanted. Many of them told the troops about Thousand Oaks, their families, their interests and their school activities. Letters were mailed to unnamed soldiers and were distributed by the armed forces.

Responses from the troops varied. Some spoke about their experiences in Saudi Arabia, some talked about their families and some gave advice.

“The hard part of the job is always knowing where I’m at, so I don’t get lost,” said Sellner, the combat motorcycle messenger. “It’s a big desert out here, and a person doesn’t want to get lost.”

Clites, the Marine who spoke of dating a cheerleader, said he works “18 hours a day, seven days a week and sleep is a luxury.”

Marine Lance Cpl. Shannon Louws told his new pen pal, Kelly Goebel of Acacia, that his wife, Jacque, of Twentynine Palms “is hangin’ in there and giving me lots of support.”

He also spoke of the uncertainty of the Persian Gulf situation.

“We have to be on the move at a moment’s notice,” he wrote. “We move every day to three days . . . We don’t know when and if we are to go up north into Kuwait.”

Marine Cpl. Terrance Patterson admonished Acacia’s Danielle Bancroft: “Listen to your Mom and Dad even though they can be a pain sometimes. They know best.”

With rumors of military action increasing, some students say they are worried about the fate of their new pen pals. “Now that I’ve received a letter from someone, now I know how they feel and what they’re going through, I’m concerned,” Heather said.

Students said they plan to correspond regularly with their new pen pals.

Heather, who has written 13 letters to undesignated soldiers, said she plans to send a photo of herself to Kishner, a 21-year-old Marine who enclosed in his letter a snapshot of himself.

She said she feels a kinship with Kishner because they are both originally from Detroit, and she has many friends in San Luis Obispo, his hometown.

Heather said, “I’m looking forward to meeting him some day.”