TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/021891/0218140.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.7 KB | 118 lines

                                                                                LIVING, Page 69

When Dad and Mom Go to War


The deadly reality of war comes home to the military couples
separated from their children by Operation Desert Storm

By ALAIN L. SANDERS -- Reported by Ricardo Chavira/Washington
and Joseph J. Kane/Hinesville


    Brenda Jarmon of Tallahassee still remembers the chilling
August phone call. Her daughter, Corporal Lynette Guthery of
the Army's 24th Infantry Division (mechanized), based outside
Hinesville, Ga., needed a precious favor. Could the 40-year-old
grandmother take care of 2 1/2-year-old Ikea -- immediately?
Both Lynette and her separated Army husband had been ordered
to Saudi Arabia, and Ikea needed a new home right away. Of
course, answered Jarmon, promptly placing her life, and her
Ph.D. thesis in social work, on hold. She had signed papers
earlier agreeing to become her granddaughter's guardian in case
of a military deployment. But now she says, "I never thought of
war; it never entered my mind."

    Four weeks into Operation Desert Storm, the deadly reality
of war has come home for the grandmothers and grandfathers,
aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers and family friends who
have suddenly been pressed into a very special type of war
service: tending children whose parents or whose single parent
has been shipped to the Persian Gulf.

    The questions, doubts and fears surrounding these children
are some of the most wrenching consequences of the nation's
decision to develop an all-volunteer military and to give women
an expanded and more egalitarian role in it. Only now is the
Pentagon conducting a survey to determine how many single
parents and military couples with minor children are on active
duty. Some experts guess that 140,000 people are married to
others in the military and that 67,000 single parents are in
the U.S. armed forces. Suddenly, many mothers and fathers who
joined the services in peacetime to begin a career -- sometimes
out of sheer economic necessity -- are discovering that the
job is ripping both of them away from their children. Worse,
those caring for the children back home fear that the task may
become permanent. Asks grandmother Mary Villarreal of Pasadena,
Texas, charged with taking care of four-month-old twins whose
Marine mother and father are in Saudi Arabia: "What if
something happens to both of them? Then what about the babies.
What becomes of them?"

    The Pentagon's answer so far has been blunt: the risk is one
that military couples accepted when both husband and wife
enlisted. "It would be a serious mistake, particularly while
we are engaged in combat," says Defense Secretary Dick Cheney,
"to reverse our long-standing policy that single parents and
military couples are fully deployable and available for
assignment anywhere in the world." To make sure that children
are not simply abandoned, the Pentagon insists that parents
appoint a guardian for them. Each service also operates a
family-support network that includes counseling for custodians
and the children. But there are no special exemptions from
war-zone service for military couples or single parents.

    Many children's rights advocates, mental health
professionals and terrified guardians say the no-exception
policy is unconscionable. Experts are worried that children who
lose both parents may suffer mental trauma, including deep
feelings of grief and abandonment, and serious psychological
problems in later life.

    Brenda Jarmon says Ikea often leaves her bed in the middle
of the night to sleep with her grandmother. "When she gets
letters from her mother, she asks me to read them over and over
again and keeps them under her pillow for safekeeping," says
Jarmon. John and Susan Menard of Hinesville, Ga., close friends
of Army sergeants Dionisio and Yolanda Lopez, are taking care
of the military couple's two youngsters. Although Carlos, 9,
seems to have adjusted well, they say, he frequently asks what
might happen to his mother and father. When Carlos learned of
the initial raids on Baghdad on the car radio coming home from
a basketball game, he turned silent. "We never lie to the
children," says Susan Menard. "When they hear about fighting,
we check it out and make sure to tell them that these are still
the airplanes and that their parents are nowhere near them."

    The emotional strain weighs on the military parents, who
find themselves torn between the call of their country and the
needs of their children. "They miss them; they feel robbed,"
says Villarreal, who puts the twin infants in her care close
to the phone whenever their mom Laura calls from Saudi Arabia,
just so she can hear them cry.

    Critics of the Pentagon policy charge that neither military
parents nor their children need suffer so much grief. Last
month Republican Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania and
Democratic Representative Barbara Boxer of California
introduced similar gulf-orphan legislation. Their bills would
allow single parents, or one parent in the case of a military
couple with minor children, to decline a war-zone assignment.
Military officials would choose which parent to exempt in the
case of a couple.

    The measures build on long-standing military regulations
that spare from combat anyone who is a sole surviving child or
whose closest relatives have been killed in battle. Says Boxer:
"This is a volunteer army, but these are not volunteer
children. They took no part in any decision that may leave them
without parents." The Pentagon says it opposes the measures.
But as the prospect of a costly ground war grows, the matter
could become an emotional issue on Capitol Hill.