MERIDIAN — With his arm nonchalantly propped against the post of a newly installed fence, Norris Galatas smiled as he watched his wife, Janis, try to coax Cinnamon, the youngest of his three horses, back to the front gate.
“Just look at them,” Galatas said, his smile broadening as the other two horses — Mandy and Ruffian — reluctantly, but gradually, began to follow. “They’re free now; free to run and enjoy all of this space.”
“They don’t know what to do with all this space to run,” he said of the horses, which are more like children to the Collinsville couple.
“For most of their lives, they’ve been boarded up at the (Lauderdale County) Agri-Center or in a small area at home. But now, they can be free.”
And so can his wife. With a safe haven for the horses at their home, she can now accompany Galatas when he goes to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in May for his next round of surgeries.
On Tuesday, the couple held a ribbon-cutting and “turning out the horses” ceremony to commemorate completion of the fence — a project started a few weeks before Galatas, a sergeant first class in the Mississippi Army National Guard’s 150th Combat Engineer Battalion, deployed to Iraq in 2005.
Galatas was one of five soldiers from Mississippi and Alabama wounded in April of that year when their vehicle passed over an improvised explosive device. One soldier died and Galatas was severely injured. Except for occasional month-long stays, he has been at Walter Reed since shortly after the attack.
Before he was called to duty, Galatas had 87 fence posts in the ground. With her husband gone, Janis Galatas had to find a way to finish the project.
Last summer, Janis set up a booth at the Queen City Fair to raise money to finish the fence so she could go to Walter Reed for her husband’s birthday later that month. A photo of Janis at her booth was published in The Meridian Star — where LeAnn and Terry Sande saw it.
“They said, ‘Let’s help this woman get this fence up,’” Janis said.
A few weeks later, the first of what would become several “fencing days” was held.
“There were about 25 people out here and we got about a third of the fencing done,” she said.
Additional support came through the Web site www.webofsupport.com, maintained by a Guardsman who served in Iraq. Through the Web site, Janis met Claudette and Aubrey Ray of Sturgis. The Rays came to Collinsville to help put wire on the fence.
“Mr. Aubrey is retired from the Army and his son (Staff Sgt. Franklin Ray) is a guardsman,” she said.
For six weeks, members of the 114th Field Artillery Regiment in Starkville, Columbus and Louisville have traveled to Collinsville to work on the fence. Guardsmen arrived in the morning to begin work on the project — digging holes, driving nails and putting up fence and wire.
“We’ve come once a week to give to Sgt. 1st Class Galatas,” said Staff Sgt. Ray. “I was stationed there in Iraq with him, so it has even deeper meaning to me to be here to help out.”
Clearly moved by the undertaking, Galatas said it was more than he deserved.
“The Lord has provided me with these wonderful people to help accomplish a dream I’ve always had,” he said.
“I could have done it over a long period of time, but with their help I’ve been able to accomplish a longtime dream. Saying ‘thank-you’ just doesn’t seem to be enough for such a wonderful thing.”
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Guardsmen gather to ‘turn out the horses’
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