Rebels to honor military at Rocky Mountain game

Riverside High School's football team is using Friday night's home game against Rocky Mountain as an opportunity to convey appreciation to members of the military for all they do for the community and the country.  
"They protect what we hold dear, our freedom of choice," said Olivia Strohschein, who is helping to organize the event. "Our military men sign up willingly to serve our county and to preserve our freedoms."
A silent auction is planned during the football game, with all proceeds going to Tunnel to Towers and Project Recovery. Tunnel to Towers helps vets who have made it home, but now have some difficulties because of what they experience during their service.  
Project Recovery is another nonprofit group with 30 years of experience organizing the search to locate, document, recover, and bring home the more than 81,500 American service members missing in action and to bring recognition and closure to the estimated 5,000,000 MIA Gold Star families. Their best case is to bring them home alive, but if they can at least bring home their remains of the service men, they bring closure to the families.
If anyone is interested in donating a basket for the auction, please reach out to the Riverside school.  
The Basin Area Chamber of Commerce is giving away green porch lights to everyone.  You can show others your support of the military by putting up and turning on your green porch light.   
Local military recruiters will be at the game, volunteering their time and donating some items for the gift baskets.  The American Legion from Basin will present the flag during the National Anthem.  The game kicks off at 7 p.m.
Some facts
Since 9/11, 2.77 million service members have served on 5.4 million deployments and 86% of those deployed were enlisted. On average, deployed personnel were under 30 years old, more than half were married, and about half had children at the time of the deployment. An estimated 160,000 to 170,000 active-duty military are deployed outside of the United States.
What happens after the deployments?  Some don’t come home the same.  About half experience one or more injuries a year. According to the Pew Research, 10% of veterans alive today were seriously injured at some point during their service to the country.  According to the VA Clinics, 23% of all vets that use their clinics experience PTSD at some point in their life.  Veterans have a 57% higher suicide rate than non-military citizens and veterans make up 9% of all homeless adults.  
Some military members never make it home. The U.S. Department of Defense web site reports that “more than 80,000 American service personnel are missing from previous conflicts and 38,000 are estimated to be recoverable.”  
Wanting to share a little bit of hometown with the active-duty military, the Rebels plan to send them gift packages. Donations are being collected to put together gift packages to be shipped to them.  Jars have been placed at businesses and government offices in Basin, Greybull and Worland.  
"Our military allows us to keep and hold dear our God given freedom," said Strohschein. "Freedom to do and be whatever we want.  Freedom to raise our kids the way we want.  And also, to enjoy the simpler things in life like playing football."