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Eyes Wide Open Across Pennsylvania

The Fall 2006 Tour

Reading Area College
Reading, PA, October 20-21, 2006

The Reading Friends Meeting did a wonderful job organizing the four-day exhibit, which was shown in two different sites.

A woman brought three bunches of flowers and asked that they be put in the boots.  “They are for all of them,” she said.  Her 23-year-old daughter has already served in Iraq and is preparing for deployment to Afghanistan.

An older man spent quite a bit of time walking through the exhibit.  He stopped at one pair of boots and was clearly moved.  He began sniffing and clearing his throat.  Very suddenly he left the room.  Once in the hallway he stopped leaned down and said, “Okay, okay, okay,” and left.

On the first day a young woman wearing battle fatigues came to the exhibit.  She was so small and looked so young, as though she were dressed in her big brother’s clothes.  One of the volunteers said, “I wanted to wrap her in my arms, hold her close and never let her go.” She is in the National Guard and is expecting to be deployed sometime soon.  Asked how she felt about serving, she said, “It’s just a job.” But she also said that, while she was not afraid, she didn’t want to have to shoot anyone or be shot at. She left a quote from Shakespeare’s King Henry V: “We few, we happy few, we this band of brothers, for he who sheds his blood for me shall be my brother.”

Many people came to see Jennifer Hartman’s boots–she lived nearby and people knew her and had read about her death in the paper.  The weekend edition of the Reading Eagle featured a picture of Jennifer’s boots with the cross necklace that her grandmother had given her wrapped around them.

Sponsors: Reading Area College, Berks County Peace Community, Social Justice Committee of the Reading Religious Society of Friends

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