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Sesame Street, USO give back to Saber Nation

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Rusty Frank
  • 52nd Fighter Wing Public Affairs
SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany --  The 2015 Sesame Street/USO Experience for Military Families tour performed complementary concerts the Skelton Memorial Fitness Center on Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, July 11.

The tour's troupe offered two performances featuring Sesame Street characters like Elmo, Cookie Monster and Rosita speaking to issues facing military children and their parents.

"The USO believes that when one family member serves, the entire family serves," said Nicole McClendon, USO tour manager for the tour.

In 2008, the first version of the show named "Elmo's Dad is Deployed," debuted and focused on a military child's experience preparing for one of their parent's deployment. McClendon further elaborated that in 2011 the new show introduced a new character, Katie, to military families.

"What's really special about Katie is that she is a military child herself," she said. "She goes through what all of our military children go through."

The new character for the show allowed the production to create two stories: one called "Katie is Moving to a New Base," and the other entitled "Katie's Family Transitions to Civilian Life."

According to the tour's fact sheet, the labors of the production team allowed the tour to reach more than 500,000 military members and their families across 147 military bases in 33 states and 11 countries.

"We like to think of it as we are hand-delivering a singing and dancing thank you card to all of our military families," McClendon said. "It's a big part of our mission is to let all military families know just because they might be far away from home, it doesn't mean home doesn't care about them."

To see more photos of the event, visit the following photo set at the Spangdahlem Air Base Flickr page.