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Serious use for Silly String WAR >> Future Marine already working to save lives

Southern Maryland teenager collects money to buy Silly String, which the military uses in Iraq to detect trip wires

Date published: 2/19/2007

By CATHY DYSON

LA PLATA, Md.---Zeke Peterson is a 14-year-old on a mission to save lives.

He's collecting money to buy Silly String for troops in Iraq. Some Marines and soldiers apparently use the party favor for a serious purpose: to detect trip wires on bombs and booby traps.

They spray the neon-colored strands into an area they're about to enter. If there are trip wires--which are almost impossible to see--the string gets caught on them.

In December, Zeke put out collection boxes at schools and visited businesses in Charles County, Md., asking for donations.

He got $6,000--enough to buy 4,400 cans. (He was paying up to $3 a can before he found a dollar-store brand.)

Now, he's working to buy more and trying to spread word about his campaign through any media outlet that will listen.

"I thought it would help the troops more than cookies or iPods," said Zeke, who lives in southern Maryland, about an hour from Fredericksburg. "I thought it would really save their lives."

Zeke got the idea from Marcelle Shriver, a New Jersey woman whose son asked for a few cans of it.

Army Spc. Todd Shriver was on patrol in Iraq with Marines when he saw them use Silly String.

He mentioned that to his mother during a call home. Marcelle Shriver asked her priest if she could put a note in the church bulletin.

"From there it just went crazy," she said during a phone interview this week.

She was featured in several local papers, then in Time magazine. The Associated Press picked up the story, and it went out over the Internet.

She's sent more than 20,000 cans so far and will send a bigger shipment next week.

A private pilot flies the cases to Kuwait, then trucks bring them to the troops, Shriver said. The Postal Service won't ship them because the aerosol could be hazardous.

Zeke contacted Shriver after he saw her story. She thought he'd collect a few hundred cans and lose interest.

"It's blossomed on my end and his end," she said. "We had no idea it was going to go this far."

But then, those who know Zeke say he's nothing if not determined.

"'Driven' is the word for that young man," said Russ Robison, who commands the Navy Junior ROTC program at La Plata High School.

Zeke, a ninth-grader, joined as soon as he started high school.

He walked into the JROTC class the first day and announced his plan to join the Marines at 17.

Zeke's father, Michael, was in the Corps for 15 years.

"I want to be over there and serve my country," Zeke said. "And the Marines are the best. They're the first to fight--and the last to leave."

Zeke says he's well aware of the risks he'll face. They scare his mother, Lisa, but not him.

"His new thing now when we talk about the danger is saying, 'It is what it is,'" she said.

Donations can be sent to: Silly String for Soldiers, Box 1723, White Plains, Md. 20695 E-mail: operationposse@yahoo.com Families who'd like their soldiers or Marines to get Silly String can send troop addresses to: Marcelle Shriver, c/o St. Luke's Church, 55 Warwick Road, Stratford, N.J. 08084 E-mail: ron101abn@comcast.net Here's Zeke Peterson's lowdown on Silly String: Best brand: Goofy String, available at most dollar stores. It shoots the farthest. Need a demo? Zeke has eight strands of black thread tied between trees in his backyard. During interviews, he takes the "rejects," cans that don't have tops, and cheerfully shoots them, showing how strands of string hang on the thread. Does it work? John Fasulo, an Army demolitions expert at Fort A.P. Hill in Caroline County, hadn't heard about this use of Silly String. "But that's a great idea, you know? It takes a young guy to think of things like that."

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Date published: 2/19/2007