“I have been deployed on and off since 2003, so this is the first time I will be home to share Thanksgiving with my wife since we got married,” he said in a Fort Hood survey.
Staff Sgt. Nathan Woodruff, Spc. Christopher Settembrino and Sgt. Kore Beverly all have plans that include spending quality time with loved ones.
What are you doing for Thanksgiving? The very question is open ended enough to bring any answer under the sun, and it doesn’t matter who you ask.
The Rev. Kenneth Wooten will be spending time with single soldiers who would otherwise be alone this Thanksgiving season.
“We are actually missionaries to the military,” Wooten said.
It’s something he and his wife have been doing for the last 14 years at Killeen’s Soldier’s Hospitality House, but the ministry itself has been around since the 1960s when it was launched by Gaylord and Maye Chisolm.
“Our target is to get the single soldiers out of the barracks, to a home environment, home-cooked meals, ping-pong, basketball,” Wooten added. “It’s a positive alternative that, hopefully helps the chaplains out.”
The Soldier’s Hospitality House, located at 3981 Chaparral Road, hopes to feed and even house 50 male and female soldier this Thanksgiving season to give them a home away from home.
Darryl Soelter remembers when he needed them most.
Before he got out of the Army in 2002, Soelter was a single soldier with no place to go at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“I didn’t know what a family looked like,” Soelter said.
“Ken and his family became like a family to me,” he said.
For four years, the holidays at the Soldier’s Hospitality House made the season of giving not only something to look forward to for Soelter, but it went a long way in shaping the young man.
Soelter got out of the Army in 2002, but stayed in the area and routinely volunteered at the house, mentoring single soldiers.
This Thanksgiving will be the last one he spends at the house, at least for a while anyway. He, his wife and new baby are moving to Baltimore where they’ll be closer to her family.
