FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:.

Contact Information: Tracy Della Vecchia, Founder MarineParents.com, 573-449-2003 (voice), tdv@marineparents.com

Headline: U.S. Marine Families to Gather in Houston

Dateline: Columbia, Missouri, February 1, 2006

The MarineParents.com family of Marine families, holding their 2006 National Conference in Houston, Texas, April 21-23 will share more than just their own lives in a rich mix of speakers, Marine displays of every variety, time spent on sofas and easy chairs telling Marine family stories and workshops for more than 20 special Marine family issues from Marine Corps history, and boot camp experiences to how to get ready for homecomings and how to help comfort, support and advocate for a Marine family touched by loss of their Marine.

When the parents and family members of hundreds of U.S. Marines gather in Houston April 21-23 for the 2006 MarineParents.com National Conference, they’ll meet face-to-face with other Marine parents, spouses, siblings, fiancés, and friends that they’ve previously known only by their sign-in names on MarineParents.com, the international meeting place for Marine families from all points on the compass.

Sometimes they’ve met as they wait together for their Marines to arrive at their home base after foreign deployment. Once acquainted, always extended family. It’s the Corps you see. Semper Fidelis is the motto, and Marine families live by it – “Always faithful”!

Get prepared Houston, MarineParents.com families are coming to town in April for a time they’ll never forget.

Bound together, by the fact that they have family members serving in the Marine Corps, these MarineParents.com correspondents share support for all possible events in a Marine family, from the joy of engagement announcement, marriage and childbirth to the tragedy of news that their son, brother, sweetheart, husband or father has been killed in the line of duty in a country 8,000 miles and 7 time zones away. They flock to the home bases to welcome their Marines’ return from Iraq, meet and re-meet each other, to hug and laugh and cry and support each other during the last hours of painful, joyous waiting.

Huddled together physically and emotionally, these strong families help each other through emotional survival while their Marines are away from home in harm’s way. The word, “Homecoming” has no meaning like a Marine Battalion riding in on chartered buses after midnight directly from the nearest military air base, still dusty with foreign sand, tired from all-night flights but racing, each to hug and hug and hug his sweetheart or wife and children or parents, and sometimes even grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins.

So, when the MarineParents.com families get to Houston in April, they won’t be strangers. They will simply, proudly be closer than you can imagine to each other and to The Few, The Proud, Their Marines.

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