Marine helps 8-year-old pen pal with special needs

Jacob Poehls overcoming learning disability by writing to Marine in Iraq

By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 11:05 a.m. ET Feb. 12, 2009

The 8-year-old boy had never been to New York City before, and he looked as if he wasn’t sure why he was sitting in a television studio with his mom talking to a nice lady who wanted to know about his Marine pen pal in Iraq.
So Jacob Poehls let his mom, Nora Hall, do the talking while he sat quietly wearing the camo hat and scarf Sgt. Balthazar Pineda had sent him from Iraq. Hall was telling TODAY’s Meredith Vieira that her special needs son had slept with the scarf and hat for a week after he got them, and described how little use for reading and writing Jacob had had before his correspondence with Pineda began.

But once Jacob, who loves all things military, had Pineda in his life, he leaped into the world of the written word, because that was the only way he could communicate with the gunnery sergeant who was serving his country in Iraq.

Changing his life
Having a Marine pen pal changed Jacob’s life “in more ways than I could ever have expected,” Hall told Vieira. “It gave him confidence besides a reason to want to write and read.”

In a few months, Pineda, who lives in California and has two girls of his own, will be returning to the states. In their correspondence he had promised to come to Colorado to meet Jacob.

Vieira asked Jacob when he expected to meet Pineda. “A couple months,” Jacob said.

“How about today?” Vieira said.

Jacob said nothing, but nodded his head to indicate that would be fine with him. And then, as if by magic, there was Pineda on the studio TV monitor talking to Jacob via satellite from Al Asad Airfield in Iraq.

“I’d just like to tell Jacob, I’ve heard about all his hard work from his mom, and [to] tell him I’m really proud of everything he’s been doing,” Pineda said as Jacob watched in fascination.

Vieira asked Jacob if he’d like to say something to the sergeant. The boy hesitated and finally said, “I really, really, really love him.”

“I love you too, buddy,” Pineda replied with a big grin.

Getting mail from home is a major morale boost for troops serving overseas. Vieira said that some 25 percent of soldiers don’t get any mail. A Web site, www.adoptaussoldier.org, has been established to connect Americans to soldiers as pen pals.

A new world opens
Last August, at her wit’s end over how to get Jacob interested in his schoolwork, Hall had called a recruiting office in Fort Carson, near their home in Colorado. She told the officer about her son’s deep love of the military, and the officer suggested she go the Web site and get Jacob a pen pal.

Excited at the thought of having a real Marine as a friend, Jacob worked hard to compose a letter talking about his interests in gym, lunch and recess. Pineda sent Jacob the camo hat and scarf and told the boy in a letter that gym and recess were fun, but reading and math were important, especially for a Marine.

Hall said that Jacob literally ripped the package open when it arrived. From that moment on, reading and writing were no longer chores to be avoided. They were a gateway to his friend.

Jacob took the scarf and hat to school, and soon his entire class — and then all of Summit Elementary School — began adopting soldiers as pen pals. The school collected stuffed animals and sent them to soldiers to give to Iraqi children, and when a TODAY show camera crew visited the school earlier this week, the school was busy making valentines to send to the troops.

“For us Marines out here, it means a lot,” Pineda said. “It means that there’s people in the United States who still care about their Marines and are thinking about us during this whole Iraq and Afghanistan war.”

Jacob was too shocked at actually seeing and hearing Pineda to say anything else. But his mother had one more thing to tell Pineda.

“I want to thank you, sir,” she said, her eyes tearing up. “I’m honored to be able to tell you how much you mean to us and my son.

© 2009 MSNBC Interactive.”
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Sam the koala wins hearts
Reuters | Thursday, 12 February 2009




THIRSTY FELLA: Volunteer firefighter Dave Tree came across the stricken koala, affectionately named Sam, cowering in a burned out section of a forest at Mirboo North.

A bewildered and badly burned koala has emerged from the ashes of Australia's deadliest bushfires, a small beacon of hope after days of devastation and the loss of more than 180 lives.Volunteer firefighter Dave Tree came across the stricken koala, affectionately named Sam, cowering in a burned out section of a forest at Mirboo North, some 150km southeast of Melbourne.

As a colleague filmed him, he approached the koala and offered the terrified animal some water, gently talking until the koala put a paw on his hand and began drinking from the plastic water bottle.

"Things do survive the bushfire. There's a koala here. You alright buddy?" said Tree in the video which was posted on the video sharing website YouTube.

"This guy has survived. He's looking pretty bewildered."

The koala, who turned out to be female, was taken to the Southern Ash Wildlife Shelter in Rawson while photos of Australia's beloved marsupial, taken on a mobile phone, spread quickly across the globe.

Carer Jenny Shaw told reporters that Sam had suffered burns on her paws and was in pain but on the road to recovery.

The story was reminiscent of another koala named Lucky who survived the bushfires that destroyed about 500 homes with the loss of four lives in the capital of Canberra in 2003.

Lucky became a symbol of hope as people rebuilt lives after the fires and was cared for in a nature reserve, dying recently.

As the fires subside, animals of all shapes and sizes who survived the fires have started to emerge from the charred bushland.

The Australian Wildlife Health Centre at the Healesville Sanctuary, located an hour's drive from Melbourne, has been taking in increasing numbers of injured animals.

But director John Gibbons said so many of the animals were so badly injured that they had to be put down.

"We had a joey today, an eastern grey of about 8 to 10 months old, but we could not save it," he said.

"We expect the workload to increase in coming days as the fires abate and roadblocks are lifted."

Wildlife workers said they had several weeks of hard work in front of them to save as many animals as possible.

Anne Fowler, spokeswoman for the Australian Veterinary Association, said wildlife likely to be affected include koalas, ringtail possums, kangaroos, reptiles and echidna.

"For those animals that can be treated, we treat the wounds under anaesthesia then protect them until they start to heal," she said. "This can take from two weeks to greater than four weeks depending on the severity of the burn."

© Fairfax New Zealand Limited 2007. All the material on this page has the protection of international copyright. All rights reserved.
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