Serving Your Country!

If you heard my segment on the Huffy Show on Wednesday, I have some news from Paul McKellips. I received this letter on Thursday morning and I will attempt to transfer it to this blog. For someone that is computer illiterate that could be a big job. The moral of this story is, I will get to meet Paul when I am in Kansas City for the NAFB Convention in November.


An Open Letter to My Broadcasting Colleagues

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Dear Friends,
My initial 90-day deployment in Iraq ends in a few days. I’m pleased to let you know that the U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad has asked U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns to consider extending my assignment in Iraq by one year. Secretary Johanns has graciously agreed and I’ll be coming back to Baghdad on January 5th.
Unlike the first assignment where I traveled to the stories from the Embassy in Baghdad, I will be traveling from village to village and FOBs (forward operating bases) non-stop in an effort to uncover, discover and report agricultural stories back to the states. With mild trepidation, I can assure you that I am excited about the new challenge.
During the last two weeks I’ve produced 12 stories which I will continue to file regularly during November and December.
For those of you who are attending the NAFB convention in Kansas City in November, I would love to meet you “live and in person” so please drop by the FSA booth. I plan to be there.
I’ve received many emails over the past 90-days asking similar questions: Why do you do it? Aren’t you scared? What does your family think? If you’ll allow me, I’d like to share my responses.
Duty. Faith. Love.
I feel a personal responsibility to serve my country during a time of war. I’m keenly aware of the sacrifices made by my father and his generation in World War II. When I load up with a couple of cameras and a Marantz PMD 660, my work pales in comparison to the men and women who load up with an M-16 and a 75-pound pack. But I can do this, and I should. It’s my duty.
I’m a man of faith. I put my trust in a Heavenly Father who is just as capable of protecting me at home as He is in Baghdad. This is my calling right now, to do whatever I can with the talents that I’ve been given, to make a difference.
But the greatest of these is love. I love being an American. I love my freedom. Most importantly, I love my wife of 25-years and my precious three, red-headed sons. Without their support I couldn’t possibly do this. I believe it’s important for a dad to demonstrate duty, faith and love to his children through everyday living. I’ve taught my sons that they must serve this country when they’re out of college. It can be in the military, or the Peace Corps, or the National Forest Service, the American Red Cross or any other organization. But I can’t ask Andrew (14), Ian (12) or Oliver (8) to do that which I wouldn’t do myself.
Yes, this is a very dangerous place to work. There’s an underlying stress that keeps you on edge. I don’t jump or react anymore when I hear the car bombs go off across the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad. But I feel something “inside” when it happens.
Even as I write this at sunset I hear the prayer callers over the loudspeakers of several mosques calling Muslims to prayer. Their ancient melodies blend in eerie harmony as winds carry their prayers of peace, punctuated with gunfire and laced with explosions.
If I were to dwell on what’s wrong with this country I’d never find the strength to seek and report what’s right.
No matter how you feel about the politics of this war, or the presence of American or coalition soldiers, I suspect that you – like me – believe that our men and women in uniform have more than earned the right to have their “good news” stories reported in the American press.
For them, it’s a story about hands, not guns. What their minds have conceived and their hands have built defies imagination. It’s hard enough laying concrete foundations as the sun burns with 136-degrees of relentless intensity. The dust gets into the mouth. Eyes are perpetually blinded with a desert mixture of sweat and sand as even the people they try to help… try to kill them.
They build hospitals, water treatment centers and remodel schools. They train teachers and farmers and doctors. They rip reeds out of irrigation canals and stock fish ponds with fingerlings. All this, and thousands of other worthwhile projects, as people they’ve never met target them in their sights for bullets and bombs.
Every time the sniper’s rifle hits its mark or an IED is successfully detonated from a cell phone call by some militant lurking in the shadows of a nearby building, we are guaranteed to hear those stories and body counts on the evening news.
But what about all these other rebuilding projects? Who tells the stories of what our young minds and calloused hands have done in this faraway land?
That’s what we do. That’s the mission of the GO Team I serve on. We go out into the very dangerous corners of Iraq and shed light on all things that are good.
But I don’t do this in a vacuum. If you didn’t air these reports, or post them on your web sites, or use the information in a reader, then this would be a very lonely place to work if you were an American soldier. You might begin to wonder, “Does anyone really care?”
From the bottom of my heart, I sincerely thank you for giving wings to my reports. Trust me; both the military and the Department of State are shocked at how much coverage “Ag News from Iraq” is getting all across America.
Paul



BIOGRAPHY: Born and raised in Neenah, Wisconsin, Paul McKellips (47) worked in the film and television industry for more than 20-years. He has written, directed and produced five motion pictures and numerous television shows. McKellips directed and produced the Jonathan Winters Entertainment Series for SpectraVision and has produced interactive television programming in Spain, Holland, Australia, Japan and the U.S. McKellips was partners with the late Reggie White of the Green Bay Packers and together they produced the inspirational motion picture, Reggie’s Prayer. McKellips left the motion picture business after 9/11 and moved to Washington, D.C. where he worked as a television news correspondent covering the Pentagon and the State Department. After working in the central newsroom for Voice of America, McKellips joined USDA where he currently works in the public affairs section of the Farm Service Agency. He and his wife, and their three school-aged children, live in Alexandria, Virginia near George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate.

CONTACT INFORMATION IN THE STATES UNTIL I RETURN TO IRAQ JANUARY 2007:

paulmckellips@aol.com
Paul.McKellips@wdc.usda.gov
(H) 703-799-2299
(C) 202-431-1701

I can hardly wait!!! Oh, By the Way... I am still trying to get the pictures from Expo redone so I can put them on my blog. I want to do that before I leave for Indianianapolis on Tuesday. Until Next Time...