Marrying the military
• Finding family support services
By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| Left to right: Nico Duncan, Killian Kelly, Kristina Roberts, Toni Spofford and Lisa Anderson, all military wives, have had to adjust to their husbands being called away, sometimes for long periods of time.
Photos by Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser |
Three months into her life as a Marine's wife, it's slowly dawning on Lisa Anderson she's not in Tennessee anymore.
She had to miss the birth, back home, of her best friend's first baby. She hasn't found a teaching job here, even with a newly minted elementary education teaching certificate and enthusiasm galore. And she's just now coming to grips with the fact that her new husband will be gone for long stretches at a time.
"I'm still adjusting," she admitted earlier this week, surrounded by seven other Marines' wives in a cozy little LINKS House near the officers' club at Marine Corps base in Kane'ohe.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the life of the military spouse — not an easy one to begin with — has added pressures, but added glory as well.
Asked if they set out to be military wives before they fell in love with their husbands-to-be, all eight of these vibrant, engaging women shook their heads and some even laughed.
When you marry into the military, you marry the military, too.
"I tell 'em their spouses volunteered, but they were drafted," said Killian Kelly, the co-team leader who runs the LINKS (Lifestyle Insights, Networking, Knowledge and Skills) Marine Corps family team building program. LINKS is a national program geared to family readiness, a concept that might best be explained as a mini-boot camp for spouses — "only we don't yell and there's no PT (physical training)," she added.
Through a series of independence-building classes, LINKS offers families of military people the skills to survive on their own during a national military action like Desert Storm, or even for a short deployment.
Looking out over the LINKS house, on a shelf that serves as a bulletin board, is their mascot: "Semper Gumby."
"Always flexible," explained Kelly, who volunteers 45 hours a week for the job of running LINKS.
Theirs isn't the only branch of the military to recognize the importance of a strong family in the event of a crisis like the terrorist attacks.
"Family readiness really contributes to mission accomplishment," said Melissa Seamands, the wife of an Army officer at Schofield Barracks.
An earlier interview with spouses at Pearl Harbor echoed many of the same lifestyle issues facing these families. The definitive one for all branches? When the going gets tough, as it did for the United States 19 days ago, their mates are the first to go.
As Anderson sat among her peers, who are farther along in their adjustment than she is, the 22-year-old grappled with the usual issues that newlyweds face, compounded by the fact that her husband is considered on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It's true, what was printed on the plastic grocery bags at the Schofield Barracks: The person who has the toughest job in the military is the spouse.
Look at the debit column of military lifestyle and you'll find the manini (your career comes second; your vacation is decided for you) and the not-so-manini (your spouse is the first in the line of fire; you're often faced with long periods, during troubling times, without a mate).
But the women The Advertiser talked to in three military services were happy to click off the credit column just as quickly: a network of people who have the same values as you do; fairly good benefits; a sense of doing the right thing by your country, now more than ever.
The women at Pearl Harbor, who asked not to be identified while their husbands were midway through a six-month deployment, obviously had turned to one another during the arduous separation, which will include the coming holidays.
They talked about how proud they were to watch the ship pull out, but then the heavy hand of realization strangles the heart, knowing they will be mate-less for half a year of holidays, birthdays, even anniversaries.
The shiny side of that coin, they said, is that it makes you appreciate your time together that much more. And e-mail, though it is screened, does help them feel connected.
It's part of falling in love with a military man.
Seamands, whose parents lived in the same house in Long Island and had the same jobs throughout her youth, recalls being attracted to a certain curly-haired, blue-eyed young man, but what caught more than her eye went deeper than that.
"One of the things I fell in love with was his value system," she said.
Not that 20 years as a military spouse has been easy.
"It's been a learning experience along the way," Seamands said with a pointed look, adding that she has learned several valuable lessons. Twenty years and two children later, she points out that while military life is what it is, marriage is a commitment between two people. If something ever had gone wrong with her marriage, she wouldn't have blamed the Army, she said.
And she has come to understand the importance of her husband's work.
In 1986, with a young child to raise, she complained to her husband's commander about all the things her husband had missed while away on a brief deployment.
The commander chastised her for complaining, and for not realizing that because of her husband, evacuated Americans and Canadians were safe when Libya was bombed.
"It took somebody to shake that into me," she said. "I was acting selfish that Tom had missed this birthday party. That was the first time that I realized his job had a larger scope than I was looking at, there was a bigger picture than my little world."
Sense of purpose can obliterate the small stuff, like frequent moves and dealing with red tape. But it doesn't hold your hand when your dear friend Ann gets stationed 5,000 miles away just as the World Trade Center comes tumbling down, as Kelly learned the hard way.
"It's harder to be left behind than to leave," she said. "I could really have used her at this time."
However, Tuesday, she and a woman she met through Ann set up coffee to commiserate how much they both miss her.
It's no secret that transportation on base has slowed considerably in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, adding to the families' general uneasiness. Kelly told of one Marine who, after dropping off his wife at work and children at school off base, found it easier to leave his car parked at the 'Aikahi Safeway and walk miles to work than wait the hour and a half to get through the car-screening process.
Toni Spofford, who lives at Camp Smith and works at the Kane'ohe base as an instructor for family support volunteers, normally faces a 25-minute commute. The day after the attacks, she waited two hours at the gate, and then was turned away because she's a civilian worker.
Other things that have changed: "I'm realizing now that I need to get a lot of things in order," such as wills, updated ID card and power of attorney, she said.
"I hate being unprepared in case something should happen," Spofford said. "... Plan for the worst and everything works out."
The other LINKS leader, Nico Duncan, a mother of three, points out that the more independent she and the family are, the easier it is for her husband to do his job. And her children are resilient.
"Like the Marines are told, 'Adapt and overcome.' It's a little pebble in the road, not an obstacle," she said.
Kristina Roberts, who hails from Las Vegas and is now stationed here, knows even more poignantly the struggles of being a military spouse: Both she and her husband are deployable Marines, and together have a 9-month-old daughter.
The potential for a long, sustained war on terrorism has her thinking. She and her husband are stymied each time they get to the part of their wills where they'll write down who will be her daughter's guardian.
"I don't want my daughter to lose both her parents," the corporal said.
• • •
Finding family support services
Commanders in each of the military services have information on support services for families.
Here are some programs and their Web sites and/or phone numbers:
Marine Corps: MCFTB (Marine Corps Family Team Building) and LINKS, usmc-mccs.org (link to MCFTB and LINKS); 257-2368 (LINKS) and 257-2410 (Key Volunteer Network)
Army: Family Readiness Groups, Army Family Team Building: 655-6460 (Schofield Barracks); Hawaii Army Mayoral Program and Hawaii Army Family Action Plan: 655-2413
Navy: Fleet and Family Support Center, 473-4222
Air Force: Family Support Center (those in the military can access hickam.af.mil/famsup); and Life Skills Support Center, 449-5892
Coast Guard: Coast Guard Work-Life, 541-1580
Reach Mary Kaye Ritz at mritz@honoluluadvertiser.com.
