Military Families Cope and Hope This Thanksgiving

Nov. 24, 2004
Yahoo News

Spending time with family, sharing the traditional turkey dinner and taking a moment to give thanks is a simple-enough Thanksgiving Day formula. Unless, that is, you're part of a military family separated from loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Or you're among those loved ones.

The sacrifice of those who serve their country is magnified on holidays in ways the public cannot easily see. Families gather missing a son, daughter or spouse who will never return. A girlfriend writes a "Dear John" e-mail because the relationship can't survive separation. Life goes on, but with its rhythms thrown tragically out of sync.

The full mosaic of two wars in which 155,000 Americans serve is too intricate to piece together in any comprehensive way, but its outlines are traced by small human dramas that will play out Thanksgiving Day.

•The pain of family members killed. Chelle Pokorney is spending Thanksgiving in Seattle with her parents, her 4-year-old daughter, Taylor - and a big hole in all of their hearts. Her husband, 1st Lt. Fred Pokorney, a tall, strapping construction worker and athlete, originally from Nevada, was killed last year in Iraq. He was 31. "He was always the biggest eater," she said.

How does she feel? "Everyone assumes that after a while you're going to be OK," she said. But "after the first shock wears off, the pain just gets different."

Pokorney, 33, is funneling her grief into work for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund in New York, where she lives. She lends a warm touch to help grieving families navigate the icy reality of life after a loved one dies. She herself had to pay for grief counseling for 10 months before being reimbursed.

In the run-up to Thanksgiving, Pokorney has been manning phones and talking to others who are bereaved. "This is a hard time for all of us," she said, "especially children."

She remains fiercely proud of her husband, both "thankful I had him in my life" and that he died securing the future of the U.S. But she and her daughter miss him.

As of Tuesday, 1,371 U.S. soldiers had died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

•Or wounded. Thanksgiving will be bittersweet for the family of Kyle Anderson, a former Minnesota high school wrestling champion. The 19-year-old was wounded in Iraq on Nov. 11, when shrapnel ripped through his helmet and into his head as he was on patrol near Fallujah.

He's in a coma. But in a touching gesture, the military is airlifting him to a veterans' hospital near his home in suburban St. Paul in time for the holiday. His mother, Mary Kylander, had been keeping a vigil by his bedside at the Bethesda (Md.) Naval Hospital. The latest news: He can now wiggle his toes.

She's optimistic. But the reality that he may never make a full recovery hovers in the background. Shattered lives and futures are a painful reality for many of the more than 8,000 men and women wounded so far.

•Raising children alone. Thanksgiving came early for the Idaho family of Spc. Dustin Huerta. He, his wife and two boys celebrated before he deployed to Kuwait with the 116th Idaho National Guard Cavalry Brigade last week. Doctors induced his second son two weeks early so that Huerta could see him.

Such are the machinations of thousands of military families trying to squeeze as many of the normal events of life as possible - birth, holidays and more - into a deployment timetable. Some are serving extended combat tours or second tours because soldiers are in short supply. Lives for their families is complicated in many ways.

On Thanksgiving Day, Huerta's wife, Katie, faces life as a single mother. From single spouses to grandparents to aunts and uncles, relatives are filling in for missing parents.

Which is harder? Huerta, 25, told his local newspaper, The Idaho Statesman, there's no contest. He'll miss eldest son Jaden's first birthday Nov. 30, both boys' first steps and first words, and his second wedding anniversary in February. But "I honestly believe (my wife's) job is a lot harder than mine."

•Financial stresses. Carolyn Ceglia is trying to hold her family together this Thanksgiving without her deployed husband, James, 39, who worked in construction and was assistant fire chief of Oyster Bay on New York's Long Island. Her three young children insist that she set a place for him. It's one of his favorite holidays. He usually cooks.

But Ceglia has little time for "normal emotions." She is drowning in financial troubles. The family's annual income of about $140,000 in 2001 has fallen to her husband's National Guard salary of $19,000 in basic pay. Way too low to pay a mortgage of more than $3,400 a month, along with other bills.

She doesn't want to get a credit card and put herself on the road to high-interest debt. But she can't make ends meet.

She has spent hours talking to officials, but feels as though she's on "a wild goose chase." For all of the talk and promises, she said she lacks convincing help on pressing financial questions.

Meanwhile, her e-mail minutes have run out. She has no affordable way to contact her husband on Thanksgiving. "All my fears are financial," she said Tuesday, voice cracking.

Some 40% of troops deployed in Iraq are from the Reserves and National Guard. Many have taken deep pay cuts. Some have lost jobs or businesses.

•Relationship strains. No official record is made of broken marriages and relationships. But deployments strain them in ways that break some up, as others grow stronger.

One soldier, according to The Oregonian in Portland, found his marriage ended in a message tapped out on a cell phone: "i dont want to be with u im leaving you im sorry".

Americans disagree on the wisdom of the decisions that sent these men to war. But on a human level, that matters little. The point is that they serve. On this second Thanksgiving of the war in Iraq, the price they and their families pay merits a moment of reflection.

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