The Villages, Florida -- Maria Rea's smile is infectious.

She loves to hug people, even those she has met for the first time, and she delights in inviting Villagers into her home for baklava and tea. The conversation often centers on her Iraqi heritage and her unwavering love for the United States.

"I love this country," said the Village of Chatham resident, who was born 71 years ago in Baghdad and became a U.S. citizen in 1972.

"I get upset that some people don't know what it means to be a citizen of this country," she said. "There is no other country in this world like the United States. I tell people, 'Get down on your knees and thank God a million times for being in this country.'"

President George Bush is one American Rea would love to meet.

She was thrilled to be in the huge crowd at Lake Sumter Landing when the president came to The Villages in 2004, on the day of her 69th birthday.

"I wanted to tell him, 'Stand tall for who you are, what you are, and what you are doing. God bless you forever,'" she said. "And I wanted to give him the biggest hug."

Today, with the war and violence raging in her homeland, Rea remains grateful to the president and American troops for the removal of Saddam Hussein.

"Thank God we had someone like Bush to get Saddam and stop the slaughtering of innocent people," she said. She also remains grateful for the actions taken to keep America safe after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"How do you forget 9/11? I will never forget that day," she said.

Yet it saddens Rea to see world terrorism as a result of religious differences.

"No one has rights to talk against anybody's religion," she said. "Religion should be accepted and respected, regardless."

The Villager remains proud of her heritage.

"I am Assyrian, originally from Babylon. Jesus Christ spoke my Aramaic language, and we're very proud people," Rea said. "Our history exists a thousand years before Greek, that's how old we are, the last civilization of the Mesopotamia. I'm always very proud of where I came from, and I tell everybody to stand tall and proud of whoever you are, where you came from, what color your skin is. Don't ever be ashamed of it."

Rea's home church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, has services in Arabic.

"The church came with Rome about 10 years ago," she said. Rea and her husband practice their faith at St. Theresa's Roman Catholic Church in Belleview.

Rea never envisioned living outside Iraq, yet she believes it was God's plan for her.

She was working as a nurse in Baghdad in the late 1950s, following the footsteps of her mother.

"My mother was my role model all of my life," Rea said, recalling how she admired her mother's white nursing uniform and cap. Her mother became a widow at age 23, when Rea was 3, and she worked to raise and educate her children.

Rea left Iraq in February 1961, at age 25, to further her nursing studies in London. She also learned to speak English. While reading the London Daily Mirror, she noticed St. Francis Hospital in Peoria, Ill., was advertising for nurses to come to Illinois to teach students how to do surgical dressings.

Rea applied for the position. She was among 12 nurses chosen for the three-year program.

During Christmas 1970, she was invited to the home of a science teacher in Peoria, where another dinner guest was Tom Rea.

"It was a blind date and it was love at first sight," Maria said of meeting her husband for the first time. "Ten months later we were married. It was meant to be, I have always believed."

She is the proud mother of their two sons, Dan and Kevin. Now, 35 years later, Tom Rea maintains that his wife is the same sweet woman he met on a blind date many Christmases ago.

"She has never met a stranger; she is extremely friendly," Tom said. "There is nobody that she does not have a conversation with that she does not hug. She is extremely gracious, extremely hospitable. We have people over three to four nights a week because she loves to entertain. She just loves people."

Maria proudly notes that she was raised with a loving heart.

"My grandmother always said, 'To love and respect anyone and anything God created,'" Maria said. "When you condemn someone, you are condemning God. So I pray for everyone, Muslims, Christians. I pray for people, all of them."

She also prays for her homeland.

"What is really going on? This is not the Iraq I remember," she said of the grave images she sees on TV. "I grew up there, I left when I was 25, but we never had any problems as Muslims and Christians with each other. We went to the mosque with our friends, and they came to church with us. I don't know where the differences started. It amazes me. I would love to go back to Iraq just once more to see what really went wrong."

The Iraq that Maria remembers was beautiful.

"Baghdad used to be called miniature Paris," she said. She remembers that she and her childhood friends played basketball and soccer, and families raised beautiful vegetable gardens.

Her wish is for all people to be happy, to find joy and love in their hearts.

She also believes in the wonders of a great hug.

"Do you know it takes less muscle to smile than to frown?" she said. "It's a waste of precious time to frown. I wake up in the morning and I thank God a million times for another day, and I promise to do the best I can."

She keeps busy in The Villages working in the Busy Hands, Happy Hearts group that sews, knits and crochets for 14 charitable organizations, and she strives to keep her heart healthy in aerobics classes at Savannah Center.

Maria remains grateful to friends Ron and Mary Abernathy for introducing her and her husband to The Villages. The Reas moved here in August 2003.

Her life has been full, rewarding and wonderful, she said.

A personal wish -- in addition to giving President Bush a hug -- would be hearing the pitter-patter of little grandchildren's feet.

"No grandchildren, yet. Keep praying for me," Maria said with a chuckle. "I'm dying to be one. I thought by 71, I would be one. But that's all right. It'll happen one of these days."

By Theresa Campbell
Daily Sun