I found out that the National Guard provides an infrastructure of regional family support advocates. Last Friday evening, I fired off an email to an address in Abington, and actually got a response within minutes, loaded with useful resources...including a reference to
Elaine Dumler's "flat daddy" photo. The idea is that a life-size cutout of your soldier can be photographed with your family and shared with others, creating a virtual presence, and generally make life apart a little more bearable.
Well, what a good idea! So I shot several photos and fired off emails to several local graphics companies. Tech Express refered me to Radford's Sign Systems and a DC firm. The DC firm responded the next day with a decent quote, and agreed to go a little extra: we made a flat Henry with a big smile on one side, but precisely fit the back with an angry flat Henry!
This one is for use at work: the flat Henry sits in my office, smiling his normal self, until some month in the future, I get a note that profits are down. I'd email Angela, our CFO, and say, "Turn the Henry around!" and out comes flat angry Henry. Angela was good enough to even practice: she held it in front of her and went office-to-office and in her best angry voice (well, there was quite a bit of laughter mixed in) said, "Get to work! Earn more money!"
Well, a few days later, the
fine folks at Sign Systems in Radford generously provided my family with all three flat-henry versions: the "happy henry", "concerned henry", and "angry henry." They printed each and mounted them very professionally (of course), and got it done quickly.
