LIVERPOOL TWP. — Dee McCurry can hardly stand to switch on the news most days. With two of her children serving in the U.S. Army — a son on his third tour of Iraq and a daughter slated to make her second trip to the country next year — she said it’s just too nerve-wracking.

But the Valley City resident said she wouldn’t change anything about her kids or the decisions they’ve made.

“It made them better people,” she said of her son, Christopher McGuire, 23, and daughter, Megan McGuire, 21. “They were good kids before, but they’re better kids now.”


McCurry sat in the Jump’n Frog Pub & Eatery, 520 Columbia Road, Thursday afternoon, surrounded by the friends who’ve become like family to her. A woman McCurry and much of the gang calls “Mama” leafed through a photo album of Megan’s senior class pictures.

“Look at her — she’s a lot skinnier now,” Mama commented, eyeing a picture of McCurry’s smiling, blond daughter.

“She has baby fat in that picture,” a man sitting nearby pointed out. “She’s in the Army now.”

It’s kids like McCurry’s who inspired another Frog regular, Charlie Hyatt of Columbia Station, to throw the “Local Soldiers Benefit Halloween Party” tonight at the bar.

On Thursday, the Frog’s usual décor of frog figurines, Browns pennants and beer signs already was accented with pumpkins, candles, fake spider webs, a string of light-up skeletons and, of course, a frog dressed as a witch.

“I hope everybody comes and has a great time and that we remember the guys throughout the year, not just at benefits like this,” Hyatt said over the phone. “There’s a lot of guys over there that feel we forgot about them and think we don’t really care, and we need to change that tune.”

Hyatt will be collecting a $10 cover charge at the door tonight to help pay for shipping care packages to soldiers in Iraq.

McCurry’s son Christopher, now a sergeant, is e-mailing a list of names of men and women serving with him who don’t get much from home.

“It’s really expensive to send stuff over there, and a lot of families just can’t afford to do it,” McCurry said. “Any time I send him something, I hear from him a few days later and he says, ‘Mom, it’s all gone.’ He passes the stuff out to everyone. Chris would give you the shirt off his back.”

She smiled thinking about it.

“He’s a real mama’s boy,” she said with a grin.

Megan, an Army reservist, enlisted when she was 17.

“She felt bad her brother was over there (in Iraq),” McCurry said. “She wanted to go too.”

Megan has a full scholarship to Texas Pan-American University, where she’s studying pharmacy.

“Megan was an athlete — all-state in cross-country and track,” McCurry said, adding Megan also was an excellent student at Avon Lake High School.

But things changed after graduation. Megan was a gunner in a Humvee during her first tour in Iraq last year, which didn’t help calm her mother’s nerves.

“She just loved it,” McCurry said with a shrug. “I told her she was crazy.”

Hyatt noted soldiers like Christopher and Megan are usually denied life’s little luxuries while they’re serving overseas.

On a corner table at the bar, Hyatt has placed a huge box decorated with American flags to collect travel-size toiletries, individually packaged snacks like candy bars and cookies, ramen noodles, instant coffee and even toilet paper to send to troops.

“I got an e-mail at work today telling me to send toilet paper — it’s kind of a treat to have that,” Hyatt said. “They’re smashing the rolls so they can fit in their duffel bags easier.

“They’re in the middle of the desert and have no running water. What they can’t carry, they can’t have.”

Tonight’s party will feature a deejay from 8 to midnight, free appetizers, a 50-50 raffle, a costume contest and lots of door prizes, Hyatt said.

The appetizers and several door prizes were donated by some of the Frog’s regulars.

And, if you don’t have supplies to donate to the care package box, Hyatt said something much simpler would do.

“Drop in a note that says ‘We’re thinking of you, we support you,’ ” Hyatt said. “It would mean a lot.”

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Quick Look
What: Local Soldiers Benefit Halloween Party; free appetizers, costume contest, door prizes and 50-50 raffle
Where: Jump’n Frog Pub & Eatery, 520 Columbia Road, Liverpool Township
When: tonight; a deejay will play music from 8 to midnight
Cost: $10
Donations: travel-size toiletries, single-serving snack packages and letters to troops will be collected to make care packages
Info: Call the Frog at 330-483-3319