For Love and Service: A Life of Devotion, Duty and Grace

My wife of 47 years passed in February.  She was a wonderful wife, mother, and friend.  My 30-year Army career would have been very different without her.  I sometimes wonder if I would have made a career in the Army without her.  She was the love of my life.  I told her, and it is true, that she was the greatest blessing of my life.  Her love more than made up for any hardships I had ever suffered.

I always appreciated her service to our country.  She served in so many ways.  As well as being a wonderful mother of two daughters and making the best of the 25 moves we had together in the Army, she was a pioneer of the early Family Support Groups (FSGs) at Fort Bragg, N.C..  When I was a battery commander there, she was asked to instruct FSGs at the post’s pre-command course.  I was very proud of her for the love and affection she brought to taking care of the families in our unit.

Young, beautiful, armed with good intentions, she always seemed to instinctively do the right thing.  During a field problem at Fort Bragg, the battery’s young wives were afraid because of a serial killer in the area.  Lisa invited them to our house on post and they camped until the danger had passed.  She once invited everyone in the battery who attended church when our chaplain preached to our house for lunch after.

She was such a sweet and caring mother.  She did so many special things to make our girls’ lives wonderful.  Her smile lifted the spirits of everyone around her.  I sometimes watched her in amazement, so happy that she was my wife.

The service of our spouses is not appreciated, or even understood, by most.  Over the last couple of months, I have given her service a lot of thought.

Of all the years of service to our country and our family, her service while I was in brigade command stands out.  I was the commander of the 17^th Field Artillery Brigade during OIF I.

I left Lisa to run the Family Readiness Groups (FRG – new name) during our deployment.  She and the rear detachment commander (a captain) were going to take care of our families during our absence.  While in Iraq, a fourth battalion from Fort Sill was attached to our brigade.  Lisa had a lot of work to do attending battalion and battery FRG meetings, passing out needed information and being there to encourage and support the wives.

Interestingly, the post commander invited Lisa to the weekly commanders’ update meeting to represent the brigade.  I had not anticipated that.  Lisa attended the meetings and gave updates on how the families were doing and requested family support when it was needed.  By all accounts, she did very well.

In theater, I would try to keep her apprised of how the battalions were doing.  In the early days of the war, we only had Iridium satellite phones to use for health and welfare purposes.  It was always great to hear her voice, although the subject of our calls was not always pleasant.  I never doubted her love and commitment.  She said she would wait for me forever, and I knew she meant it.

It wasn’t until I returned from the war that I truly understood the difficulty of her mission.  Being there for the young wives and young families was a full-time mission.  Our house was always open to the members of the FRG.  My daughter told me that it was not uncommon for people to arrive unannounced late into the night.  Lisa was always glad to see them and welcomed them into our home on post.

With so many soldiers deployed from Fort Sill, there were many casualties during the war.  There were procedures for delivering the news.  There was so much painful suspense involved.  Lisa would share with me after the war stories about going with the casualty notification officer (CNO) to bring the very sad news.  She also told me she had watched the tiny convoy of the CNO slowly go through our housing area praying that they would not stop at our house.

She did not share her pain with me when I was in the combat zone.  She was loving and supportive and told me about our beautiful girls.  When I returned, she told me that she kept my old T-shirts and did not wash them.  She treasured the smell.  She said the odor slowly went away across the year-long deployment, making the absence seem even more ominous.  I tried to understand how a love like that was possible.

Lisa attended the funerals for our service members and worked to support the grieving wives.  Lisa was soft-hearted.  The music and the service itself were a huge challenge for her to maintain enough composure to assist.  She told me that she would get the music that was going to be used at the service, and she would play it for a couple of days at the house while she did her chores.  She said she would eventually cry herself out – enabling her to be more composed at the funeral.  I tried to imagine her feelings and her commitment.  Completely focused upon taking care of our soldiers and succeeding at our missions, I could not have imagined what she was going through.

On one occasion, the III Corps commander called me on the satellite phone and said, “You won’t believe what your wife did.”  Knowing her, I was not concerned but interested.  He said that following a funeral service for one of our Soldiers, she invited the grieving family to our house for dinner.  This extended family had come some distance to attend the service on the post.  There were more than 100 people at the dinner.  Although not planned, the FRG quickly went to work and pulled off the event.  My youngest daughter was enlisted to support.

They pulled it off.  But the best news was that the family got to visit with their son’s friends in his battalion – the families that he had spent holidays and weekends with.  They shared stories and celebrated his life.  The mother told our Corps Artillery Commander that she felt so much better.  She had feared that her son had died alone on the far side of the world.  She said she now understood he was with his Army family.

When I returned from Iraq, I asked my wife what she was thinking when she made the invitation.  She said she had not given it thought, but as she stood there with the grieving mother, it felt like the right thing to do.

I continue to think about her love for people, our family, our nation, and me.  Our home is a tribute to her life.  I look at the pictures and keepsakes with a great sense of love and gratitude.