Eyes Wide Open Across Pennsylvania
The Spring Tour 2007
Doylestown Friends Meeting: Doylestown, PA
April 6 - 7, 2007
 Although Spring had officially arrived the weather did not spare the Doylestown Eyes Wide Open Exhibit one last cold blast. We drove through snow, sleet and fog to get the boots from Pittsburgh to the Doylestown Friends meeting House.
On Thursday evening twenty one volunteers from the Friends Meetings came to be trained as listeners, one of the largest groups of volunteers yet.
Each exhibit is unique and Doylestown was no exception. Civilian shoes and signs telling of the plight of the people of Iraq were grouped on the lawn outside. The boots, displayed alphabetically by home town lined the walkway leading into the Meetinghouse. After walking up the path and entering the room the alphabetical ordering continued, but instead of being on the ground the boots were placed on benches. In the front of the room (grouped around an American and Pennsylvania flag) were the 36 pairs of boots, representing the local soldiers killed. This portion of the exhibit even seemed to glow when the lights were turned on during the evening on Friday.
 The cold weather continued to persist throughout the entire two day event which may have kept some people from coming to the exhibit. Despite this fact, and aided by the “First Friday” events in Doylestown, over 200 people were able to walk among the benches and see the exhibit first hand.
The exhibit also garnered substantial local press coverage. There were four papers who ran articles about the exhibit and two that ran the full articles on the front page of Saturday's paper.
We had a number of interesting visitors to the exhibit. AFSC staff talked to one man who felt that the literature on the table turned the exhibit into a political event instead of a memorial. The conversation was a thoughtful one and while he did not leave with his opinions changed it gave both listener and listenee something to think about.
 Included in the 200+ who visited the exhibit were two noted visitors both of whom came on Saturday. One was a woman who arrived to the exhibit very distraught and distressed by the number of boots on display. She spoke about her son who had been in the first Persian Gulf War. She said that this war was so different and that the soldiers weren't even equipped with the necessary body armor. Her son had even teamed with another soldier from the first Gulf War to buy armor for soldiers. After telling her story she left saying that this exhibit was “invaluable” and that she was going to make sure her son would come when it was back in the area.
Soon after she had left the site was visited by the brother, and his family, of one of the local soldiers who had been killed. He was surprised to find a message already in the boots, and asked where it had come from. We were able to contact him later and tell the story of the note. It had been put there by a young soldier in Pittsburgh. She had been there when the brother and his buddies had died and wrote a note to all of them. She has since reenlisted feeling that she needed to continue the struggle so their lives would not be in vain. After spending time with the exhibit he left but returned with mementos which he left in the boots.
As always after the exhibit we are all, volunteers, people attending and AFSC staff, impacted by the losses, the messages in the boots and the people that attend.
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