Local soldier comes home,
meets postal worker who supplied unit with care packages

Dustin Klafehn, a carpentry/masonry specialist with the U.S. Army, came home and met, for the first time, Conrad Schott, the Spencerport postal worker who had been supplying his unit with care packages.

"He is a friend of my mother-in-law's and decided to send treats and supplies to our unit," Klafehn said. "He would send me boxes of stuff and I'd share with the other guys in my unit."

Klafehn and Schott met for the first time this week when Klafehn returned home from Iraq where he had been stationed for the past seven months. While his unit is scheduled to return to the states in December, Klafehn suffered a broken hand during a construction job in Iraq. "We were building barracks for the Iraqi soldiers and my hand got in the way of a hammer," he said.

After spending the past week in his hometown of Churchville, Klafehn will be returning to his base in Georgia. He has been in the service for the past year-and-a-half and says his tour is up in March 2006 so that he can concentrate on spending time with his wife Lisa (Ryerse) of Spencerport.

"We got married May 28 of 2004 and I was deployed in January 2005. We haven't had much time together," Klafehn said. "I'm so grateful she's stuck by my side while I was there."

Klafehn said that having access to the internet and e-mail made the separation more bearable. His wife will remain in the area when he returns to Georgia because Klafehn said she has a good job and they don't want to uproot everything as he is hoping to be out of the service in six months time.

He is a 2002 graduate of Churchville-Chili High School and is the son of Lena Belsher.