Back in the 1980s, Sean Wead was an NCO running missions in the ‘Z (he’s now a colonel chaplain).
“…I was manning an observation point when Chaplain (Capt.) Ken Sampson, our unit chaplain, joined me at my post…He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Sean, it’s your father. He’s had an aneurism. They are going to do surgery, but he is not expected to survive.’ I was in shock and disbelief. I had just spoken with my father a couple of days before. My father was everything to me. He was not only my father, but my mentor and friend. A world where he was not in it was unimaginable to me. Chaplain Sampson prayed with me and told me that command had my emergency leave complete.”
The problem was Wead couldn’t afford the round trip plane ticket to the States (like many soldiers then and now). But Army Emergency Relief kicked in and he was able to reach his father’s hospital bed less than a day later, just in time.
“If it were not for Army Emergency Relief, I would have never made it home to say goodbye,” he remembers in this article. “If you have a chance, take care of a soldier by giving to Army Emergency Relief (AER).”