Military

DATE=1/15/03

TYPE=English Feature

NUMBER=7-37105

TITLE=Military Poverty

BYLINE=Brian Mann

TELEPHONE=260-1623 (Editor)

DATELINE=Fort Drum, New York

EDITOR=Faith Lapidus

CONTENT=

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INTRO: The U-S Military is preparing for possible war in Iraq. But the armed services are also struggling with a more domestic issue. By the Pentagon's own estimate, thousands of military families live in poverty. As Brian Mann reports from Fort Drum, in New York, despite recent salary increases, many enlisted men and women say they can't afford food and other basic needs.

AUDIO: CUT 1 HALLWAY, DOOR LOCK, FOOD PANTRY AMBI (snk under first text, x-fade with Cut 2)

TEXT: At the end of a gray, cinderblock hallway, Amy Levesque unlocks a door and switches on the fluorescent light. A cavernous room is crammed to the ceiling with boxes of cereal, hamburger helper, and cans of stew.

AUDIO: CUT 2 LEVESQUE

The Department of Social Services donated the formula and the baby food for us. And we also have something that people forget about and don't think that people need, which is diapers.

TEXT: Miz Levesque runs a food pantry in Watertown, New York, a short drive from the Fort Drum Army base. She says Army families make up twenty percent of the people who come in, looking for free meals and supplies:

AUDIO: CUT 3 LEVESQUE

The military kind of has a "we take care of our own" motto, which you realize that they kind of don't. And there are a lot of people who fall through the cracks and need the assistance who aren't getting it.

TEXT: Miz Levesque speaks from experience, as a social service worker, but also as the wife of a soldier. Her husband, an army specialist, brings home roughly thirteen hundred dollars a month after taxes. not enough to pay for rent, food, utilities and other necessities.

AUDIO: CUT 4 LEVESQUE

I have always worked two jobs. And my husband, he's in the military plus he has a nighttime job. Luckily we don't have any children. With children, it would be very difficult.

TEXT: But half of the military's 1.3 million soldiers and sailors do have children. Even with subsidized housing and extra pay during deployments, many find that it's nearly impossible to make ends meet.

Loretta Schwartz-Nobel is author of a recent book about hunger in America, called "Growing Up Empty". She says the lower ranks in the Armed services are basically working poor.

AUDIO: CUT 5 SCHWARTZ-NOBEL

Some of these kids see this as a way out out of poverty a way to fulfill the American dream, so to speak. However, no matter how skillful a person or a family is, when you are earning somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 dollars a month before taxes, and you have three or four children, you are not going to be able to survive comfortably, even if you know how to make everything stretch.

TEXT: The most recent Department of Defense report, from 1999, found that forty percent of lower rank soldiers face "substantial financial difficulties." For her book, Miz Schwartz-Nobel interviewed families at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in San Diego. Some told her, they simply go hungry.

AUDIO: CUT 6 SCHWARTZ-NOBEL

For several days at the end of each paycheck period, they often have almost nothing to eat. sometimes absolutely nothing. That's when they turn up desperate at food pantries, soup kitchens, bread lines, because they've literally run out.

TEXT: U-S Military officials acknowledge that poverty is a fact of life for some soldiers, but say they're working to change that. The different branches of the armed forces have begun new programs, designed to help spouses find better jobs and to teach young families how to budget their money.

For families already in crisis, the Defense Department has created "subsistence grants" of up to five hundred dollars each month.

AUDIO: CUT 7 HUPCO

There's never going to be a soldier, as long as we know about it, that goes without food. And his family is in that same situation.

AUDIO: CUT 8 FAMILY CENTER AMBI (snk in child's voice under next text, lose under Cut 9)

TEXT: Diane Hupco is an Emergency Relief Officer at Fort Drum. Every day, she says, soldiers turn up here at the base's Family Center. It's a place where Army spouses and children meet to share support. Often, Miz Hupco says, they come in frightened and hungry.

AUDIO: CUT 9 HUPCO

We last year had a thousand and sixty-one cases, requiring 657-thousand dollars in assistance. You're dealing with about ten percent of the population that needs that help.

TEXT: Defense Department officials say the situation is improving, with far fewer families needing government financial help to buy food. Another pay hike goes into effect this year. But troops at the lower pay grades will get half of what many officers receive. And soldiers say that extra money will be offset by the growing number of deployments and transfers.

AUDIO: CUT 10 STREET AMBI (snk under end of previous text, hold under through Cut 12)

TEXT: On a snowy afternoon, a woman in fatigues sits in her car outside a strip-mall, near one of Fort Drum's main gates. Her boyfriend has gone inside a check cashing shop. The neon sign promises loans to military families.

AUDIO: CUT 11 WOMAN

If you know how to budget your money real good, then you can live just by getting by. A lot of things I have to worry about now, I thought I wouldn't have had to worry about.

TEXT: The woman, in her early twenties, declines to give her name, but says she's an army specialist who's served for two years. Without Federal nutrition programs like WIC, which provides infant formula and low-cost food for young children, she says her family couldn't make it.

AUDIO: CUT 12 WOMAN

One thing I do get because my daughter, she's still a baby, I do get WIC. That's a good thing. And if you don't have WIC, that milk is really expensive.

TEXT: This kind of need is painful for soldiers. Amy Levesque with the food pantry in Watertown says many of her military friends are too proud to speak up.

AUDIO: CUT 13 LEVESQUE

They have a very hard time coming in here and saying, I need help. It's kind of a shame thing. They feel embarrassed. They feel like they can't provide for their own. Dignity, they feel like they're losing part of their dignity.

TEXT: Military bases around the country once allowed food pantries to bring supplies inside their gates. Here at Fort Drum, trucks delivered free food regularly, offering soldiers and their families more privacy. The trucks were banned after the September 11 terror attacks, forcing the families and the problem of military poverty into public view. For Main Street.I'm Brian Mann at Fort Drum in New York.