Paper's AFAD coverage poor, needed more pictures -- fire the editor

Dear editor:

What one occasion has helped put and keep Mountain Home on the Idaho map? We are known for the Air Force Base being here in Idaho and the city and state have battled a lot of closure threats to keep the Air Force here.

After 54 years of showing our appreciation to the base, we had a wonderful parade on the 6th of September with bands, vehicle exhibits, dignitaries, animals, Air Force Base squadron floats and representatives, and other extraordinary floats that filled our two-hour parade.

As usual, the Mountain Home News dropped the ball again in their reporting the exceptional event. This waste of time you call a paper only had room for seven pictures and approximately four columns of information and descriptions. You donated one column for the race, one for the corn shucking and two for the remainder of the parade.

There was one picture of a beautifully dressed woman, one of a singer (no names). There were no decent pictures of any of the floats, not even the winning float of the 428th Fighter Squadron "Buccaneers" pirate ship.

A lot of hard work went into the construction of that beautiful ship and nothing. That is a work of art and you showed the wheel and four cannons. How deplorable your work is.

You couldn't even tell it was a ship. There were also so many other beautifully decorated church floats, other displaying groups and you never even mentioned them but go to the sports page and you can read the entire game, play by play, who did what, how far and how many plays it took to score, hair color, blood type and short size of every player involved. And that's every week.

The AFAD parade happens only once a year and this is what we get from this joke of a paper. Shameful, very shameful.

Maybe we need a new editor who has a broader and more open idea of what really is important and newsworthy.

The news media from Boise put you to shame by showing the ship for several days on their news and you showed the wheel and four cannons. Bravo! This is the perfect example of the lackluster attempt of our editor to put out an informative paper. It's a joke.

Karen L. Murphy

(Editor's note: For photos of all 125 parade entries, and other activities, we urge you to check out the photo gallery at our website: www.mountainhomenews.com