Quinn visiting wounded service members

Gov. Pat Quinn is heading to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to deliver holiday cards to wounded armed service members from Illinois.

Visiting the troops during the holidays has become an annual tradition for the governor. During the last eight years, he has traveled to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany — the largest American hospital outside the United States. But his office says in a news release that because so many service members have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, he decided to go to Walter Reed instead.

Quinn will be giving wounded service members cards made by Illinois children when he visits the hospital Friday. He says the cards are the children’s way of saying thank you to men and women who can’t be home during the holidays.