BANGOR - As a chaplain in the US Army's First Cavalry Division, Captain Edward Tolliver just spent nearly a year in Iraq as the guy to whom soldiers came for advice, comfort, or just a welcome face. But on a recent May evening in Bangor International Airport, Tolliver was the one receiving the comforting embrace.

Moments after the chaplain had landed on American soil for the first time in 11 months, Kay Lebowitz, 93, spotted Tolliver tucking into a Maine lobster roll. She rushed over, wrapped him in her firm hug, told him she was proud of him, and added, as she has been saying to troops in this airport almost every day for the past six years: "Welcome to Bangor!"

America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have receded into the background of a country troubled by domestic economic matters. Yellow ribbons have largely disappeared from trees. Support-our-troops magnets have disappeared from most cars. And men and women in uniform filter through many airports unnoticed.

Not in Bangor, the easternmost major US airport, and a stop for planes transporting troops to and from both war zones. Here, Lebowitz and a diehard band of volunteers have made it their business to greet every single soldier, Marine, sailor, and airman or woman who passes through the gates for the layover. Since 2003, when the Maine Troop Greeters, as they call themselves, began their vigil, they calculate that they have cheered, chatted up, and shaken the hands of more than 841,000 troops.

Some of the greeters are World War II veterans who want the current troops to experience the kind of welcome they received more than 60 years ago. Some are Vietnam veterans who want to ensure that today's active servicemen and women are spared the indifferent, and often angry, welcome some of them endured when they touched down on US soil. Some are military parents seeking to compensate for the longing they feel for their deployed son or daughter. And some, like Lebowitz, greet the troops simply because they feel it is the right thing to do.

"Isn't it wonderful that so many people are willing to take the chance to put themselves in harm's way and to protect this country?" said Lebowitz, a former state representative who has spent much of her life in public service and still volunteers for several nonprofit groups. She drives to the airport (79 years behind the wheel without so much as a parking ticket), where she circles the waiting area and tries to hug everyone in uniform she sees. "I want them to know that I admire them so much."

The feeling is mutual.

The troop greeters, Tolliver said, help "to remind you that people still appreciate you."

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