Keeping Hope Alive for Matt Maupin

'Keeping hope alive' is a tender, well written report by Robin Acton of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

It reminds us of the sacrafice that Matt Maupin and his family have made on our behalf:

...Day after day, month after month, they go from Friday to Friday because at the end of the work week, the Pentagon gives them a "rescue and recovery" status report. Lately, there hasn't been much.

Capt. Ann Marie Daneker, a communications officer stationed with the Army's 88th Regional Readiness Command in Minneapolis, said last week the soldier's status remains missing, captured and "the only one."

That alone has exhausted Carolyn Maupin, who has red-rimmed eyes, frayed nerves and high blood pressure. Sometimes, she goes into his bedroom and cries.

There, school awards and military certificates compete for space with movies, football mementoes and boxes bulging with more than 10,000 pieces of mail from around the world. There are letters announcing two promotions since his capture and a stack of scrapbooks made by friends and church groups who saved newspaper clippings and took pictures of signs and prayer boards and bound them in Army green.

At the foot of the bed, there's another box, a plain cardboard carton from the Army that she can't open. She knows his glasses are inside and some clothes that dogs sniffed for his scent when search parties fanned out across the war zone...

Matt Maupin....Missing but not forgotten.