Elmo, USO team to support military children - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Elmo, USO team to support military children

FORT BELVOIR, Va. — The military preschoolers rocked the theater with a roar, jumping up and down as Elmo danced onto the stage.

“Sometimes Elmo has a not-so-sunny day,” the lovable red Muppet said, explaining that his daddy has to go away. “Do you ever feel sad when you miss your mommy or your daddy?”

“Yeah!” yelled many of the children.

The children, their parents and preschool teachers nearly filled the 900-seat Wallace Theater on Tuesday for one of two Muppets shows scheduled that day. It was a scene that has played out at 43 installations around the country before some 70,000 military family members have attended free performances of the Sesame Workshop USO tour, which winds up Nov. 2 at Fort Scott, Ill.

It’s part of Sesame Workshop’s “Talk, Listen, Connect” program supporting young military children.

Including National Guard and reserve families, there are about 700,000 pre-school military children whose parents are being deployed, said Gary Knell, president and chief executive officer of Sesame Workshop.

The Talk, Listen, Connect program “is a way of really trying to treat military families with respect, to give a helping hand with some guidelines in communication with kids during stressful times,” Knell said.

The next step in the series will be a video that helps children in grieving families that experience the loss of a loved one.

The tour has been so successful that the USO is already working on next year’s version. Sloan Gibson, USO president and chief executive officer, said they’d like to take the show to 30 to 35 more bases in the U.S., as well as bases in Europe and the Pacific where troops are deploying and leaving family members behind.

Sara Kovich, who turned 3 the day after the show, said the “dancing and the singing” was her favorite part, along with getting to see her favorite character, Cookie Monster.

Her father, Air Force Maj. Matt Kovich, said he is trying to spend as much time with his family as possible before deploying to Iraq in a few weeks. He and his wife Amanda also brought their infant son, Matthew, born Oct. 11.

“With our situation especially, with me leaving, this gives us something to do as a family that we know our daughter will enjoy,” he said.

Amanda Kovich said she had just received a copy of the Talk, Listen, Connect video and she plans to watch it with Sara.

The Fort Belvoir performance was Knell’s first time seeing it with a crowd of military families. “I wanted to see the real impact,” he said. “I can’t be more pleased with how it has turned out.”

He said a primetime PBS special is planned, which may air as soon as this spring, that will feature the Talk, Listen, Connect series to educate the American public about what military families experience.

“Oh my goodness, it was great,” said Army Spc. Tsonsera Rhoades, stationed at the Fort Belvoir hospital, who brought her daughter Zoe, 4½.

“I felt like I was 5 again,” said Rhoades, whose husband is on a 15-month deployment in Iraq.

She said that while she and Zoe were watching a movie recently, Zoe siddenly started crying.

“She said, “I miss daddy. I want him to come home,’ ” Rhoades said. “You don’t think children are so affected by things, that they’re happy little creatures who just run around and play. But it really affects her.”