Military bases get families ready for war

Most who teach military family readiness discourage families from leaving the base when their spouse is deployed. That's not always easy.

During Desert Storm, for instance, 25,000 of the then-30,000 Fort Hood soldiers were deployed - and thousands of families left as well.

Bobbie Hanlon was one of those. She returned to her native Hawaii with her three children when her husband was sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990.

This time, she says, she would stay on base. "It's important to be around families who are going through the same thing as you," says Mrs. Hanlon, a program coordinator at the Lane Volunteer Center.

Her husband is career military, so Hanlon has had to learn how to handle the constant deployments.

"I write a lot of letters and say a lot of prayers," she says. "And I never hide my emotions from him. If I'm mad, I tell him so."

She always warns fellow spouses that the hardest part of the whole experience is the soldier's return. It's not the romantic reunion everyone expects.

A 17-year veteran sergeant at Fort Hood knows that first hand. He says when he got back from his eight months in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm, he and his wife had to attend marriage counseling.

"It was real rough coming home. My wife had become independent, and the kids were used to not having me around. I'd lost all respect in the house," says the sergeant, who asked that his name not be used.

He's picking up his youngest son at Clarke Elementary School, one of seven schools on base. The Killeen Independent School District has more than 30,000 students, 60 percent of which are soldiers' children.

Teachers here say it's important for children to be as stable as possible in an unstable situation. That means staying in school and having a regular routine.

"The unknown is a child's worst fear at this age," says Patricia Journey, the school's counselor. "They are gonna feel all these intense emotions, and see their mom go through it as well. It's important to have a place where they feel secure."

Increasingly, though, both spouses are enlisted. Because there's a possibility that both could be deployed at the same time, the military requires they always have a family-care plan.

Olympia and Jeremy Nava are a perfect example of this kind of family. The Army couple have come to pick up five-year-old Michael, who is clutching his Mickey Mouse lunch pail and doing his best to look invisible. The Navas say they do not talk to him about the possibility of war or that they could both be deployed.

He's too young to understand all that anyway, says Olympia, a sergeant.

"We just tell him that we are going to the field to sleep in tents, and that we might be gone awhile."

If there is a situation where both Navas need to be gone, Jeremy's parents will take Michael. It's hard to consider that possibility, they admit. But they will gladly go if needed.

That kind of attitude about deployment is unusual, say long-time soldiers. But then again, this is an unusual situation. Stamper compares the feelings among spouses today to those during Desert Storm.

"There's not the resentment, the grumblings of 'You're taking my spouse away from me, and it's all just for oil,' " says Stamper, decked out in a red, white, and blue sweater and flag earrings.

"This is seen as much more noble, more patriotic. And I think spouses are more understanding."

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