The Kansas City Star May 08, 2004
Mom's call of duty tests strength of family ties
Mother's Day is bittersweet for women serving in war zones and for their loved ones here at home
By Rick Montgomery
On the morning Tammy Carroll left home for the war against terror, husband Tim and the boys returned to a house that suddenly seemed hollow.
"I'm lost," was all Tim Carroll could think.
Mom was gone, maybe for a year.
How many birthday balloons would need filling until next spring? How many Scout projects and school papers would require a guiding hand? The dinners and desserts, the miracle kisses on little Adam's ouchies, the books at bedtime?
It has been three months now, and Dad is trying. But he knows on this Mother's Day how much is missing.
"Managing a household, I've learned a lot. But mothering?" says Carroll, taking a breather in the living room of his family's split-level house in Spring Hill. "There's a lot in a mother's touch that I can't do. I wouldn't brag at all about being Mr. Mom."
To that, son Timothy, 12, dryly injected: "No. You're just a dad."
Timothy, the oldest of three Carroll children, is probably the one taking Tammy Carroll's absence the hardest.
On his own, Timothy recently brought home a book about the place where Mom, a nurse in the Army Reserve, now bandages other children. "It's in Afghanistan," Timothy says when quizzed.
How cool, a visitor replied. Don't you think it's cool, Timothy, to have a mother over there in a cause to make the world better?
He gazed straight into the eyes of his questioner: "No. It bites."
U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have included more than 60,000 women. Experts guess that as many as half of them are mothers - a demographic for which data crunchers in the Defense Department have no precise numbers.
"It comes part and parcel with having an all-volunteer service" that relies heavily on deploying fathers, too, says Lori Manning of the Women's Research and Education Institute in Washington. "If we can't deploy mothers . the armed forces fall apart."
The female WACs and WAVES of World War II, by regulation, were childless. And until the 1970s the military routinely kicked out women who got pregnant or were found to have lived 30 days in a household with a child, Manning says.
Women remain barred from many front-line combat roles such as the infantry, special operations or driving heavy tanks. But Manning says it is increasingly rare for the military to grant deployment waivers to anyone - man or woman, married or single - on the basis of that person having young dependents.
Of the 18 women who have died in Iraq, at least a half-dozen were mothers. They included Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa of Arizona, the first American Indian woman ever killed in combat wearing a U.S. uniform. She died in the March 2003 ambush on the 507th Maintenance Company in Nasiriyah. Pfc. Jessica Lynch was wounded in the attack, taken hostage and later rescued.
Piestewa, 22, was a single mother - like 14 percent of all women now serving in the Army.
It is an admirable calling, says John Pike, a military analyst for GlobalSecurity.org. He asked: "Why is it they stay soldiers?"
Many just love the military. And single mothers especially need the benefits of active duty, Pike says. "It's stable pay, and you get health insurance, and you've got day care on the post."
As for the tens of thousands of civilians who joined the reserves in peacetime, partly to pump up the household budget, duty simply called.
It called Timothy Carroll's mom away from her regular nursing job at Olathe Medical Center when the 325th Field Hospital unit in Independence was deployed.
"I want my kids to know I'm very proud of them and how well they're doing," Maj. Carroll, a reservist for 14 years, told The Kansas City Star in a phone call from the medical unit she oversees in Afghanistan. "My sons are doing their patriotic duty, too, by having me gone. . It's tough for them."
Crystal Johnston is missing her second straight Mother's Day.
While the Army specialist serves her second tour in Iraq, 2-year-old daughter Felicity Paisley is in the care of Johnston's parents, Tom and Sue Johnston of Holden, Mo. Crystal Johnston and Felicity's father broke up early on.
Crystal Johnston, 24, is part of a medical rescue team that races by helicopter to flare-ups that leave American troops dead or wounded. As her parents describe it, the job demands mental toughness and a stomach of steel.
But tell Crystal Johnston that Felicity needs her tonsils removed, and the maternal emotions bust open.
"After I sent the e-mail, Crystal called right away and started crying," Sue Johnston says. "She said, 'Mom, I'm supposed to be there for her when these things happen. I'm missing her grow up.'"
The family thought this summer would be different. Having been deployed early last year for the invasion of Iraq, Crystal Johnston returned home in September for what she had hoped would be a lengthy rest from war. But the 82nd Medical Company deployed again in February from Fort Riley, Kan.
So Crystal Johnston will miss her daughter's third birthday, just as she had missed the second.
But the e-mail and the phone calls come regularly, and Felicity's grandparents remind her all the time of Mommy's sacrifice.
"Mommy's in Iraq," Felicity tells adults who ask. "Mommy's there fighting the bad guys and helping the good people."
When Mommy left home for the second time, it took everything to pry Felicity from her arms.
Fathers might relate:
Timothy Carroll broke his left arm playing on a trampoline at a family gathering while dad Tim was at work - just two weeks after Mom left home.
Tim, feeling a bit cursed, "swallowed hard" when calling Tammy about their son's injury. There then followed the doctor's appointments, the insurance hassles, the cast that kept Timothy off the track squad and his dad wondered how much more.
How long can a family live on hamburger hot dish? How many nights can a man sleep just a few hours? Tim's worrying about Tammy strained him enough.
On top of the tasks at home, Tim Carroll works 12-hour shifts as a Johnson County sheriff's deputy. But you look around his house and it's tidy, the toys picked up, the lawn mowed. The three dogs are fed, and the three boys have clean clothes.
Just then, an older women steps into the living room and extends a delicate hand.
"I'm Tim's mother," she says. "Joan Carroll."
She moved in just before Tammy shipped out.
"A lifesaver," says Tim.
If life can be hard for area dads on the home front, it is even harder for the moms at war.
Adrienne Leone, 24, left the active Navy earlier this month and returned to her mother's home in Claycomo. She was away from son Raymond for 13 months, serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a gunner's mate on the USS Sacramento then working in public affairs at a stateside naval station.
Raymond turned 2 in March.
"I missed a ton of stuff," Leone says. "His first steps. First tooth. First word. It was 'dada,' not 'mama.'"
When Leone reunited with her son, he didn't know her. He cried when she held him. "But it didn't take long at all for him to be attached to my hip, and I couldn't leave him for a minute," she says.
Leone loved the Navy, enlisting at age 20. She loved the discipline and the rigor.
But she has a fiance now and two babies, including a 6-month-old daughter. She is looking for work in the private sector. "I'd recommend the Navy to anybody, but I decided leaving my kids was not the right thing."
Laura Abfalter reached the same decision after 10 years in the Marine Corps, surrendering dreams of being a drill instructor.
Her decision came at the start of the Iraq war. Abfalter, mother of two and wife of a Marine sergeant, was flying in the belly of C-130 just 200 feet above hostile land. She could hear explosions on the ground and rocket-propelled grenades whistling past the plane.
"I looked across the plane at a comrade - also a mother - named Suzy Wilcox. And I screamed out, 'I'm done!'" says Abfalter, whose parents live in Grandview. "I just want to stay home and be with my babies."
Military analyst Pike says that as hostilities drag on, the Pentagon worries about more moms and dads bolting from active service.
"I think the Army chief of staff is terrified," he says. "If the pace of combat continues as it's been going recently, and the job market comes back, what are the options of a soldier with kids? . I think we're going to have a problem."
Retired Army Sgt. Pauline Keehn disagrees.
"Most people don't understand how well the military takes care of our children," says Keehn, a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War who answers inquiries for MilitaryWoman.org, a private Web site. "My son got to live history up close. He got to travel the world over, and the schools on post were wonderful.
"When you're deployed, military families come together and help you care for the children. You're not standing alone."
Nine-year-old Brian, the Carrolls' middle child, darts up the stairs to retrieve the clothes his mom mailed to him shortly after she left.
A black beret. Crisply pressed desert fatigues - his size - and a pair of small black Army boots. Brian excitedly spread them out on the carpet, his favorite things in the world to wear.
"She's risking her life for her country," he boasts.
Three-year-old Adam points to framed photos on the mantle and says, one by one, "Mommy! That's Mommy! Mommy, there!"
Those Carroll boys are coming along, with Dad's calm commands and his cookouts, and Grandma's help around the house. Mom and Dad share e-mail everyday. He bought a digital camcorder to send videos of the boys' school functions, playable on Tammy's portable DVD player.
He has lost 28 pounds since she left. He thought he should do something - trim down, stay fit - while his wife toiled to save Afghan lives in a primitive part of the world without a bathroom to call her own.
E-mail from that world rolled into The Star on Friday. Maj. Carroll encouraged other moms in her unit, all reservists from the Kansas City region, to send their Mother's Day thoughts.
Sgt. Laura Eckert wrote: "Every day is a war in my heart on how to serve my country, my family and my God."
Lt. Alice Olmstead: "My son is serving in the Navy now. The separation is still difficult as I will be missing my daughter's high school graduation. Luckily, I have a wonderfully supportive family and group of friends who will be taking care of all the things required to make her graduation memorable and special."
Staff Sgt. Frances Tate: "My husband and boys support me 100 percent, and I am proud to be their mother."
And this from Tammy Carroll:
"I have a special album I brought with me. It has the boys' handprints in it. I can line my hand up with theirs, and it is like we are holding hands.
"I will be lonesome this Mother's Day, but in my heart, I am there with my boys, holding them and loving them."
To reach Rick Montgomery, national correspondent, call (816) 234-4410 or send e-mail to rmontgomery@kcstar.com.
© Copyright 2004, Kansas City Star and wire service sources
