By Eileen Daday | Daily Herald Correspondent
A flyover by a pair of F-16 fighter jets Saturday seemed to signal that the 5-year-old Freedom Fest in Barrington had come of age.
Several hundred spectators standing in front of the event's main stage, and surrounded by military vehicles - from military police Humvees to cargo trucks and even a Coast Guard search and rescue boat - soaked up the patriotic festival.
"This is a wonderful way for us to celebrate that cherished of all American values, freedom," said Karen Darch, Barrington village president.
Many in the crowd were military families. Among them were Army Command Sgt. Major William Bissonette, of Lake Zurich, who returned from Iraq in March, and his wife, Katherine, a retired Army officer, making their first trip to Freedom Fest.
Their son, Pvt. First Class Michael Bissonette, a 2007 Lake Zurich High School graduate, arrived in Iraq this week.
" When we found out about this, we knew we had to be here," said Bissonette, who was in the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists struck.
Roy and Georgette Frank of Elk Grove Village, whose son, Marine Lance Corp. Phillip Frank was killed in 2004 in Iraq, were the only gold star parents on hand.
It was an emotional day, they said, but they turned their grief into action as they promoted their "Heart of a Marine Foundation" and its work for returning veterans, in the event's Care Village, filled with agencies offering assistance to veterans.
"It's a wonderful thing to see so many people singing the national anthem and here supporting the troops," Roy Frank said.
The day started out with an inaugural 9.11-mile Freedom Run that wove participants from the Barrington train station to a cross country course at Beese Park in Barrington.
The race drew 335 participants, including nearly 40 percent military personnel and their families, as well as 250 U.S. troops stationed at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, who ran simultaneously.
Steve Breese of Palatine was the overall winner, with a time of 56:19, while a trio of former Barrington High School cross country runners led the women's field, including Jenny Ellis, Christina Fiduccia and Taylor Penrod, all of Barrington.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Van Sickle, a mobilization assistant of the Air Force's U. S. Southern Command based in Miami, described a rarely seen side of the military - deploying humanitarian aid to Latin America and the Caribbean.
"Comfort, compassion and goodwill go a long way toward preventing war, rather than making war," Van Sickle said.
Dirk Beveridge, the Barrington resident who founded the We Do Care nonprofit organization in 2004 that mounted the community festival, said the day was about patriotism and not politics.
"It's about goodness," he said, "about the goodness of our military and those who wear the cloth of our nation."
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