The Shirts Off Your Backs

A couple of Carrollton-living Friends of Unfair Park -- Tavis Schriefer and his wife Jill -- have a son in Iraq: Nicholas serves in Apache Company of the 1-501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. At the moment, Jill says, Apache Company is located in the Triangle of Death -- "a lawless, seething region," as The Washington Post described it in 2004, though it's little different today. "They encounter IEDs on a daily basis," Jill writes.

She sent a missive because she has a request: Her son's company needs driFIRE shirts to keep the boys (relatively) cool in temperatures that can reach 140. "We are $1,500 short of our goal of $8,000," Jill writes, and since she didn't ask us to put this on Unfair Park, well, that gets her the mention -- look, it's the least we could do. Besides, Jill and her husband aren't the only folks raising money for these shirts. Here's their Web site, with the necessary info -- and here's a KXAS-Channel 5 story from earlier this month, should you need convincin'. --Robert Wilonsky