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Alex Cabrero reporting Communication with loved ones at war has come a long way since World War II, Vietnam, even the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Today, Eyewitness News found one group that is trying to make that communication available to all soldiers' families.
Webcam technology has been out for almost 10 years, but not every family has a computer at home, let alone a webcam. That's where "Operation Keep in Touch" comes in.
Almost every day, U.S. soldiers are in some type of dangerous mission in Iraq, and almost every day, one of those soldiers could be Jennie Taylor's husband.
Taylor is the typical military wife raising a family while her husband is on the other side of the planet fighting a war. But unlike past wars, being half a globe away doesn't stop her from seeing her husband often. "The webcam, I mean, it is the saving grace of a deployed family," she said.
Today, as part of "Operation Keep in Touch," the Orem library received two webcams from the Veterans of Foreign Wars. It allows families of deployed soldiers to use the webcams at the library to see and talk to their loved ones for free.
That's something one military wife wishes she had during the first Gulf War. "The phone call we had once a week ended up costing me roughly $2,000," she said.
When Kraig Thorne, a veteran himself, heard that story, and others about how much cell phone cards are costing soldiers today, he got the idea of webcams in libraries. Orem's is the third library in Utah County to get them. "It makes the distance seem a lot less," Taylor said.
And lessening that distance makes the war just a little bit more bearable for this generation of military families. "We had the webcam set up on Christmas morning. My husband could watch the kids open their presents and kind of be there," Taylor said.
Thorne is hoping he can get free webcams to all the libraries in Utah County. After that, he's going to try and get webcams for all the libraries in Utah.
E-mail: acabrero@ksl.com
