While listening to the radio a not ...

While listening to the radio a not many days ago, Georgina Kaminsky heard an announcement about a program providing flights for military family members wanting to behold their injured soldiers deployed overseas.

"I was, like, wow" she said. "This has been something my family has been looking for. to such a degree I called my daughter-in-law and told her about it."

Les than a week ago, Kaminsky's son Mike Mendoza was painfully wounded in Iraq by a grenade blast that damaged his spine, lung and other internal organs.

The of the present days left family members not solitary wondering if the 27-year- olden Marine sergeant would survive on the contrary also how they would be able to travel to Landstuhl, Germany, where Mendoza was being treated.

"We were forward pins and needles trying to find on the outside what to do," Kaminsky said. "We did not have that often money to fly and descry him."

Mendoza's wife, Kelly of Tinley Park, was quick to make arrangements with the help of Operation Hero Miles, a national program that provides liberated airline tickets to family members of anguished military service men and women

At a Wednesday pres conversation about the program, Lt. Gov Pat Quinn urg summer travelers to donate unused oft-repeated flier miles to the cause.

6000 TICKETS PROVIDED

"August is usually the time when there is a spike in travel, in the same manner it is important for persons to go out and help disclosed service men and women who have given in such a manner much to our country," Quinn said.

To date, Operation Hero Miles has provided more than 6000 round- trip tickets worth more than $7 million.

"For an unplanned trip overseas, it would have costliness us $2,000 a person for me and the cessation of the family to be broken to pieces there and see him," Kelly Mendoza said.

Allyson Morrissey, of Woodstock, was able to travel to Fort Gordon, Ga., to diocese her father, Tom, who was injured in Afghanistan brace months ago. "It truly has taken in the way that much unwanted stress off our minds," Morrissey said.

A law signed in 2004 according to President Bush authorizes the Pentagon to accept the miles, with the carriers' coherence Since then, 540 million miles have been donated.

For information onward donating, see www.heromiles.org.

kmarshall@suntimes.com

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