THE BRIDE WORE WHITE

Nothing unusual in that...except she's a soldier, in Baghdad, marrying a soldier in Colorado...ah, just read the story.

Staff Sgt. Shadow Evans, 30, and Sgt. Rick Everton, 29, married Friday evening in Durango, but for the bride - who was north of Baghdad, Iraq - it was early Saturday morning. She appeared at her wedding only as a foot-tall image on a video screen.

Evans is in Iraq on active duty with the National Guard. She watched her husband and the judge who married them from a laptop.

It's the first time a wedding has been conducted by video from a war zone between two soldiers.

And here is a story about the charitable foundation that provided the video equipment to our soldiers.

Free video teleconferencing (VTC), high-speed Internet systems with e-mail and Web-based phone lines are available to Camp Cooke troops to take them virtually anywhere.

The first facility using donated technology from a not-for-profit organization called the Freedom Calls Foundation will officially open Monday, but many troops have already used the technology to see events they would have otherwise missed.

So far people on camp have seen a live birth on a big screen TV, been married by proxy over VTC, and have seen numerous graduations, all thanks to the foundation and Durost, who has worked double time to get the center prepared for Monday.