Real daddy likes ‘flat daddy’

When Sgt. Richard Sprague saw Sgt. Richard Sprague on his porch, he found it strange.

But Sprague wants Sprague to stay.

"I'm going to leave him there because I think maybe he'll scare people," Sprague said of his cardboard likeness that his family kept around while he was away.

Sprague, the live version, returned to Las Vegas from Iraq a little more than a week ago. An Aug. 26 Review-Journal story had detailed how his wife, Patt, and her grandchildren carried a cardboard cutout, known as a "flat daddy," of the National Guardsman around while he was serving in the Middle East.

Now his likeness, which shows him carrying an automatic weapon, will be used as a modern-day scarecrow. He thinks it could fluster someone with crime on his mind.

"You don't see something like that on the porch every day," said Sprague, who will return to his security job with Whiskey Pete's next month.

Patt Sprague and her grandchildren, Joshua and Christian, had been taking their "flat daddy" version of the 46-year-old Richard Sprague to dinner, to the movies, to the playground, and shopping. They talked to the replica as though it were flesh and blood.

Media reports suggest that thousands of families of American soldiers are doing the same thing.

"If flat daddies help keep families close, it's a good thing," said Richard Sprague, who lost much of the hearing in his right ear when the truck he was driving ran over an explosive device. He also badly strained his neck.

Patt Sprague said that since her husband has been home, he has been having difficulty sleeping.

"He'll start wandering around a lot, late at night," she said.

She said he is allowing no balloons or "poppers."

"He doesn't want a balloon breaking or anything else that sounds like an explosion around the house," Patt Sprague said.

Richard Sprague recently re-enlisted for six more years in the National Guard, so he will be able to retire with more than 20 years of military service.

He said he does not think U.S. troops should be pulled out of Iraq "until their government and military forces are ready to take over

"If we just leave, I think some other country will just come in and take over," he said.

As he drives around Las Vegas in the family van, Richard Sprague, who has served two tours in Iraq, finds himself thinking about the dangers overseas.

"I keep looking to the side of the road to see if any explosives are hidden," he said. "That's what I thought about all the time when I was driving in Iraq. It's going to take me a while to stop thinking about that."

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