Hutchinson ? After months of flying Army Black Hawk helicopters over Iraq, Capt. Katrina Gier Lewison got a good look at conditions on the ground when she received a new assignment: helping modernize villages. What she saw in one impoverished town tugged at her heart.

So the Hutchinson native decided to appeal to her hometown to embrace the village of Augba as an informal “sister city” and shower its residents with clothing, aspirin, hand tools, school supplies, children’s shoes — just about anything the U.S. Postal Service lists as acceptable for delivery to Iraq.

The quick response after Gier Lewison’s request was published in The Hutchinson News, which has carried several of her “Letters from the Front,” showed that Augba isn’t getting just a sister city. It’s getting at least a couple of Reno County towns, perhaps the whole county.

Within one week, 21 packages were shipped from Hutchinson to Augba, and more were soon to follow.

“When I read it in the paper, I thought she was doing something really wonderful, so I just did it,” said Joyce Warren, who shipped more than $100 worth of items to Gier Lewison.

“I sent some dress sandals for a boy and a girl, a really cute little girl’s outfit, some stuffed toys, aspirin, T-shirts, underwear,” Warren said. “And I also sent her some chocolate with a note that said ‘This is for you.’ I read where she really likes chocolate.”

Lots of interest

Gier Lewison’s mother, Kathy Gier, has fielded calls from churches, elementary school teachers, a Boy Scout troop, parents of soldiers and ordinary citizens who want to help.

Rozel City Clerk Martha Sauer said she talked to Gier and decided to get her town of 170 people involved.

“I’m hoping the whole community will do it,” Sauer said. “We’re going to ask people to individually donate things at our Christmas parade on Dec. 7. We’ll pack it up and ship it off the next week.”

And the Hutchinson chapter of Rotary International is taking up the cause.

“We have 150 members in Rotary, and we’re going to ask every one to get their employees involved in helping this village,” secretary-treasurer Dave Thomas said. “Here we have one of our own from Reno County being a potential target in Iraq every day, and she’s saying, ‘Hey folks, I can use some help.'”

Appeal for help

Gier Lewison — whose husband, Tyler Lewison, is also flying Black Hawks in Iraq — wrote in an e-mail to the newspaper Nov. 3 that she believed helping Iraqi villagers would also help Americans.

“My interpreter informed me that many Iraqis were extremely scared of Americans coming to any of their villages,” she wrote. “Naysayers told these wide-eyed people that we would come into their towns, kidnap their children and rape their women. Even now, many of them cower when they see our American Humvees drive by.

“Therefore, I see it as essential to show them the good side of America,” she wrote.

Her recommended list of aid items reflected what she saw in Augba: women cooking with old pots and pans, children without shoes, repairs being made with inadequate tools. What she hadn’t seen, she wrote, was any sign of international aid workers in Augba or other small villages.

“I know that the United States alone has enough problems that need fixing,” Gier Lewison wrote. “However, I see this as a unique opportunity for one intimate community to help another.”

Gier Lewison’s appeal reached Hutchinson resident Linda Anderson, who had recently got a new set of pots and pans and figured the Teflon cookware she had bought only a few months before was headed for a garage sale.

Anderson boxed up the Teflon cookware — three skillets, a Dutch oven and two pans — along with bars of soap, Halloween candy, medical supplies, crayons and other goodies and had her husband, Gary, ship them to Gier Lewison.

“We have always wanted to help but didn’t know what to do,” Anderson said Friday. “I read Katrina’s letter where she was talking about how they are frightened of us. Perhaps this is a way to humanize us with them.”