Shestories

It isn’t very often that The Virginian-Pilot’s Op Ed page brings on peals of laughter at my breakfast table. But ever since Daniel Golden’s article delineating the high level of success in Department of Defense schools appeared in the Wall Street Journal, there have been some very odd ideas expressed on the last page of the Hampton Roads section of this paper. As distinguished national columnists such as William Raspberry of the The Washington Post and Anthony Lewis of the New York Times try to explain to the American public how this could possibly happen, they reveal how very little they know about the military lifestyle.

For example, Mr. Raspberry, who usually writes intelligent, well-informed columns on the state of public education in this country, feels that one area where the Department of Defense schools succeed where the nonmilitary counterparts fail is due to the “presence of parents, particularly fathers.” Now that’s funny. When I needed two hands to count how many deployments my husband had made, I stopped counting. This was due to that fact that I was so busy being Mom and Dad that I never had two hands free at the same time to count. Does Mr. Raspberry even know what a deployment is? What a geographic bachelor is? Or better yet, does he know what a “one-year unaccompanied” is? The “presence of parents, particularly fathers” – POPPYCOCK!

Mr. Lewis has this idea that the success of Department of Defense schools is because “the gap between high and low incomes is less stark among military personnel, and less distorting than in our civilian society.” Let’s take a closer look at this idea. A Petty Officer 2nd class with ten years of active duty makes about twenty-two thousand a year, and a Lieutenant with ten years of active duty makes a little more than twice that. They could both have a daughter in Ms. Smith’s third grade class in the DOD school in Rota, Spain. Each of those little girls knows that based on her active duty parent’s rank, not only is her allowance determined, but also the size and location of the house to which her family was assigned upon arrival in Rota. There are beaches where the officer’s family goes on Sunday afternoons, and there are other beaches where the enlisted family goes on Sunday afternoons. There are even specified parking places at the grocery store for the officer’s wives. There is nothing more stark and distorting to the civilian world than the military system of rank. By the way, it is also a difficult concept for third graders.

But the test scores show that this does not seem to adversely affect their ability to read and write. Roy Truby, who is the executive director of the board that administers the National Assessment Test, feels that this report “debunks the notion that demography is destiny.” So what does mark the destiny of these military dependent third graders at DOD schools? Obviously, I do not agree with Mr. Raspberry’s emphasis on the presence of fathers, nor do I agree with Mr. Lewis’ idea that the success is due to a less stark and distorting gap between an O6 and an E1. Furthermore, given that the military community is a reflection of American society, the performance of these children cannot rest with more caring parents, better prepared teachers, or brighter students. Ms. Smith in Rota, Spain has the same challenges as Ms. Smith in the local public school. In searching for the differences between the two student bodies, each columnist has failed to understand one basic feature. Of the 224 DOD schools, 153 are overseas. I would argue, therefore, that this study debunks demography for geography.

For the most part, these children who have scored so well on National Assessment Tests spent a total of three years of the K – 12 experience in DOD schools. The rest of their education took place back here the good old USA, and most probably in the local public school system. However, these children return with one great advantage. For those three years, they lived in another country, be it Spain, Japan, Korea, or Panama. In doing that, they have not only seen another culture but they have experienced it deeply. So have their parents. In fact, they had this life-changing experience together, as a family, and it has changed them forever.

A list of the possible changes is too long for the limits of this column, but I think most who have lived overseas would agree with this summation of the experience. One returns from an extended stay overseas with a deep appreciation for the quality of life – an appreciation which overrides quantity of life time and time again. With this lesson in hand, returning to the USA opens up so many vistas of opportunity to this family of sojourners – education being one of the most obvious. This is why these children continue to perform so well in life, long after 80% of them have graduated from college.

Every morning I routinely open our front door and send the dog out to the end of the driveway to fetch the morning paper. I usually place the paper on the kitchen counter while I rummage under the sink to get a treat for the dog as a reward for her service. But on Friday, March 24th, the dog had to wait. The headline “Coast Guard to cut operations” had caught my eye through the plastic bag, and this woman’s best friend was not going to get her treat until I finished scanning the front page story to see what was going on. For several years I have read with great interest anything the Coast Guard is up to – ever since a young enlisted person did something which had a powerful impact on my life.

On August 31, 1994 the U.S Coast Guard Cutter Nantucket was cruising the Florida Straits in response to the Cuban Refugee Crisis.. If you were standing on the cutter’s deck that day, a crew member would have explained that all the rafts you saw floating in the water and the Cuban refugees sitting in them were still within the territorial waters of Cuba. Beyond the line of rafters the crew member could have pointed out not only the skyline of Havana but also a Cuban gunboat cruising within her own territorial waters.

Allan Weisbecker, a writer from New York and on board the Nantucket that day, could see that the Nantucket’s crew of sixteen was having a busy day. Once the ship spotted a raft which had made it to international waters, she pulled aside and boarded the refugees. Ten days earlier the Nantucket had been in the process of boarding refugees in heavy seas. The raft had capsized, and three crew members had jumped into the rough water, near the jagged edges of the capsized raft, and rescued the drowning people. In four months the Coast Guard and Navy had rescued 50,000 Cuban refugees.. The Nantucket’s crew alone had saved 1208 lives – young women holding infants, feeble, dehydrated old men, young men claiming to be political prisoners.

It was routine for the ship’s crew to dispose of the empty raft so that it would not become a hazard to navigation. Most of the rafts encountered were no more than an inner tube with some framing of odd pieces of lumber and were disposed of quite easily. However, this day the Nantucket came across a vessel structured of metal piping filled with foam. They knew that this one would be tough. Two crew members boarded her with pickaxes and set about their task. One of the crew members then saw a refugee rise from the collection of Cubans sitting on the deck of the Nantucket and exclaim, “She not sink, never!” The crew spent twenty minutes hacking away at the La NINA, the name inscribed on her stern. The craft would wallow, but it would not sink. The Captain finally ordered them to just set the vessel adrift. As the two Coast Guard crew members boarded the Nantucket, one made his way over to the Cuban who had spoken . He asked the Cuban if he built La NINA and as Weisbecker put it, the refugee fearfully nodded yes. The crew member then offered his hand in respect and admiration. The Cuban, having very little dignity left in his present situation, sat down, and unsuccessfully tried to hold back his tears.

This story has haunted me since I first read it in 1995. My husband and I were separated for a year due to the Cuban Refugee Crisis, and for a long time, I am ashamed to say, I had no sympathy for Cuban refugees. I knew this anger was wrong, and I worked on getting over it. I held onto that story about this crew member of the Nantucket as my own life raft of sorts. I knew that if he could show such empathy and compassion in the midst of yet one more of a long line of twenty-hour days working in the heat of a Florida Straits summer, then surely I could get over it.

His simple gesture speaks volumes for the unique culture of the United States Coast Guard. A simple gesture on our part, in return, would be to support the Coast Guard’s call for full funding, so that these dedicated people can continue to not only respond to all search and rescue calls but also to fully enforce fishing laws, prevent illegal aliens, keep drugs off of our streets – and set a much-needed example for selfish folks like me.

Heading home for the holidays? Out of all my friends and acquaintances, I can count on one hand those who are natives of Tidewater. The rest of us routinely pack up the car for the long trek home for the holidays. I remember doing that for quite some time, but I’d like to tell you why I stopped.

I remember walking the oak-shaded trees of my New Jersey hometown holding my young son’s hand. We would head out from Gram’s house for the fifteen minute walk to Main Street, where we could get a bowl of home-made ice cream. The sidewalks which we followed to town were cracked and buckled, not so much from age as from the huge roots of those oak trees. My son would ask for the same stories each visit. About my best childhood friend who lived in the house across the street whose parents still live there. About the people next door who knew my family before I was born, and still live there. About climbing trees that were big when I was little whose very roots were now ripping up the sidewalk. He would sigh and dream aloud to me about what it would be like to grow up in such a place, where nobody moved, where Gram lived around the corner, where Aunt Reeny’s ear was a bike ride away, where cousins lived in the next town. And he would promise me and himself aloud, that when he grew up, he would raise his family in a place just like this. A place with strong and deep roots.

That’s when I’d start to worry. A mother wants to give her children everything they wish for, especially aunts and uncles who are a part of their daily life. But my life had taken me far away from my immediate family, as it has for so many of my friends. What does this transient lifestyle do to our children? Dragging them around the country, the world – two years here, a year there. Was this fair? At that point those oak trees seemed to come alive, like that scene in The Wizard of Oz, telling me in a deep oak-tree voice that I was making one big mistake. Nature simply did not intend for children to be raised like that.

After years of worrying about this, I found myself in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There was a magnificent old banyan tree in the back yard of our house. A banyan tree does not have a traditional root system like the oak tree. On the contrary, as the banyan’s branches grow out and up toward the sun, a vine will sprout from the branch and make its way from the branch to the ground, where it will root. Through this natural rerooting system, the vine grows to form another supporting trunk for the tree. As a result of this system, one banyan tree will appear, at first sight, as a stand of trees until you get under it and look up, only to discover it is but one tree.

My handful of friends who are natives of the area are the oak trees, and it really is nice to know that there are still some of them around. But the rest of us, it appears to me, are banyan trees, putting down roots wherever we happen to find ourselves. No rules of nature are being broken; the children will be OK. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be OK. The banyan tree allowed me to understand that, and those big old oak trees up in New Jersey don’t intimidate me anymore.

On a little league bleacher several years ago another Mom and I were swapping stories. Hers will help me make my point clearer. It was a Christmas long ago, and she and her husband were up to three or four kids – all under the age of 8 or 9. Her husband was packing the car for the long road trip to spend Christmas with his folks. The four-year old appeared at the door and said “Daddy, where are we going?” His father responded that they were all going home for Christmas. Then the little boy said “But, Daddy, I thought this was home.” Her husband then unpacked the car.

Because that Christmas it was.

“They just don’t understand.” How many times have you heard this from a military spouse and she, or he, is referring to their very own parents, brothers, and sisters?

My father was a lawyer, and my mother raised her seven children in a world where a son graduated from college, chose his profession, went to school for it, graduated again, and opened his own office. Somewhere along the way he got married. My three older brothers, one doctor and two lawyers, followed this pattern, as did my three older sisters who married pretty much the same types. Six months after I married a Lieutenant Junior Grade, my husband “got his wings.” A few weeks after this momentous occasion, my husband and I arrived at my parent’s house for Christmas. My mother was trying hard to understand her new son-in-law’s career pattern, and at the same time was concerned about her daughter’s future. This all manifested itself with the question she asked him as we came through the kitchen door. “Have you got your own ship yet?”

Deployments are a real mystery to outsiders. My husband’s third deployment left me in Virginia Beach with our new baby and our three-year old. The night before his ship was to come in, one of my sisters called me to share in my excitement. I explained the whole pier scene to my sister, explaining that it would be an hour or more before we would be able to board the ship, at which time my husband would get his gear, and the four of us would finally head home. She then asked me what our plans were for that night. I didn’t answer immediately since I didn’t know exactly how to say “it”, so she went on to say “I bet I know! All of the wives and husbands get all dressed up and meet at a nice restaurant for an elegant dinner!” I explained that I had been going out to dinner with these women for six months, and they with me, and that our husbands had been eating dinner with the other guys on the ship for six months. “DINNER” I said, “is the last thing on our minds.” I knew she still didn’t get it when she asked “Well, what will you two do?” I just flat out told her.

We have now entered the stage when my brother’s and sister’s children are getting married, so we attend a wedding once or twice a year. Last spring one of my nephews married a young lady from Long Island in New York. The reception was in a very swanky south shore yacht club which was decorated in that brassy, expensive naval motif. Each entranceway housed several large brass cannons, swords hung over each doorway, and expensive looking oil paintings of ships hung on every wall. During the cocktail hour, my husband and I were dutifully mingling when we found ourselves together with a group of people which included the mother of the bride. My husband, a Commander at the time, was in his service dress white, with all the ribbons and pins in their appointed place on his chest. After a few minutes, I saw that the mother of the bride was staring at my husband, until he began to chat and laugh with one of my brothers. Then the mother of the bride exclaimed “Oh! I see! You’re a guest!” She explained that because of his “outfit” she had thought that he was one of the waiters. The poor woman tried to redeem herself by saying “You’re IN something, AREN’T you? Let me guess. Is it the Air Force?”

There are many aspects of military life that are hard for civilians to grasp. Career patterns, deployments, and even uniforms can eventually be explained and understood. However, there are experiences unique to military life that my brothers and sisters will never understand. For example, I do not know how to explain the bond of friendship that is instantly renewed when you turn your cart around a corner in a commissary and and come face to face with someone you haven’t seen in years, but whom you have never forgotten for some act of kindness they did for you when you were both stationed on the other side of the world. I have come to realize that that’s a military life thing, and they just wouldn’t understand.

My husband and I are now nearly finished with a one year unaccompanied tour of duty, after having been evacuated from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. My family has certainly been there for me, but there are many aspects to this one that I don’t even understand yet! As we all know, life goes on. I received a wedding invitation in the mail last week. Another niece is getting married. It was addressed to Captian and Mrs. J.F. Boland. Here we go again!

On a recent Sunday afternoon, I was in neutral waiting for my turn at the gas pump on Little Creek. Over by the air pump, a man was checking the tires on his truck from which he was towing one of those black inflatable boats that Navy SEALS use a lot. A woman was nearby, watching him, leaning against a pretty beat-up compact car. He finished his task, and walked over to this woman, who then simply fell into his arms and buried her head in his shoulder. Then I realized what was going on. He was a SEAL, and he was going away. From the length of the embrace, he was going for a long, long time. As he drove away, she stood there, biting her knuckles. Finally, she got into her car, only to rest her head on the driving wheel while she cried some more.

We often see pictures of such heartbreaking farewells on the piers. But farewells don’t always happen there. Military families say good-bye not only on piers, but also in hangars, and at military as well as civilian airports. They always make me cry. My kids know this, and if they are with me, they try to move me along. My oldest son was sitting shotgun as I witnessed the scene at the gas station, and he tried to assure me that she would be OK. “Just don’t watch, Mom.” But I can’t stop my eyes from looking at her nor tearing for her.

I am not alone in my voyeurism. Several years ago my two children and I were at the airport in Palma, Spain doing one of those farewells after a ten day visit over Christmas. It would be another three months before he finally came home to us. We had had a wonderful time, and the reality of the good-bye hit us all pretty hard when they called our flight at the gate to our aircraft. All four of us broke down and took turns holding each other. We were the only Americans on that flight that morning while all the other passengers were Spanish families returning to Madrid after spending their Christmas holidays on the island of Palma de Majorca. They did not need subtitles to figure out what was going on. When I finally looked up from my husband’s shoulder, I realized every man, woman, and child at the gate was watching this scene, shaking their heads as if to say this shouldn’t be, and crying along with us.

The only consolation is that on the other side of good-bye is hello. I once met a woman who told me that throughout each deployment she would go down to the piers and watch every ship that came in while her husband was gone. She needed to witness that joy regularly to make it through her six months. I am always renewed when I see a couple in the exchange that has recently been reunited. They firmly hold hands while openly flirting with each other and then, as she shops, he rests his hand on her shoulder and gently massages her skin with his thumb. These couples are in their late thirties or forties, they’ve been married forever, and they often have a houseful of kids at home. Whenever I see them, I stop in my tracks and gape with my mouth wide-open in wonder. If my kids are with me, they plead with me to stop staring and physically drag me away.

These days, I find my thoughts returning again and again to that woman at the gas station, biting her knuckles. She is just beginning what I am about to end. Her calendar shows an endless stretch of Friday nights with Picket Fences reruns and lonely Sunday afternoons. My calendar has each Sunday since last September neatly crossed out. There is an airport where it is all going to end for me on Friday night. After I get a kiss or two, I will stand back and watch him hold his sons. Then I will see her : A military wife, who just happens to be there, who will witness our joy. Our eyes need only meet once. No words need to be spoken between us. Good-byes and hellos such as these are a never-ending cycle for military families and, somehow, in the silent watch we keep on each other, we carry each other along.