Soldiers learn to deliver grim news
By Rebecca Dana
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Army Capt. Rita Winborne, head of the Casualty and Mortuary Affairs office at Fort Myer, Va., optimistically lays out 40 training binders in her classroom. They are for her monthly two-hour training course for personnel willing to deal with the families of the military's dead.
It's not a popular class. By the 9 a.m. start time on a recent Thursday, four people had come.
More troops are dying in Iraq and more families are requesting funerals at Fort Myer, just across the river from Washington, in Arlington, Va., than Winborne's 10-person staff can handle. Her department has started actively recruiting new casualty notification officers and casualty assistance officers: CNOs and CAOs, who do some of the grimmest work of war, far from the battlefields.
Notification officers have a one-time job: They deliver the bad news and the secretary of the Army's condolences. Within a day, the casualty assistance officers take over and spend up to a year working with the deceased's immediate family, delivering the $6,000 "death gratuity" check on the first visit.
CAOs take care of funeral arrangements, transportation costs, casket selection, printing of memorial cards, endless paperwork — as much as the family wants them to do.
"It's the hardest job there is," says Winborne, 37.
The need for new officers to be on call is particularly urgent. So Winborne delays the start of her presentation, "Casualty Operations Brief for Certification," just a few minutes, in case there are any stragglers.
There aren't.
Helps family in crisis
"I just think about how I would want my wife treated if something were to happen to me," Lt. Col. Antonio Aragon says matter-of-factly.
Aragon, 40, helped Suzanne Lombardi, 39, a mother of two whose husband, Vincent, died of cancer at 40. In her words, Aragon "picked us up."
Vincent Lombardi was a major with the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment at Fort Richardson, Alaska. When he died, Suzanne found herself a single mother with 15,000 pounds of household goods she had to move off an Army post in Alaska.
Aragon helped them move 320 boxes, 14 crates and all of the living room furniture to New York, where the family lives now.
"The kids grew really fond of Tony," Suzanne says. When her son really starts missing his father, he e-mails Aragon.
Aragon calls occasionally just to check up.
"They're all military, all wear the same uniform," he says. But in the end, "you have to balance family needs with Army needs." It's humbling, he says, an honor.
Some don't work out
After months of frustration, Meighan Adamouski, 30, is on her third casualty assistance officer. Her husband, Capt. James Adamouski, 29, was a company commander whose Black Hawk helicopter went down April 2 in Iraq.
Meighan Adamouski lives with her in-laws in suburban Washington while she attends graduate school. She says she had to drive herself to her casualty notification officer to find out that her husband was dead. That was more than 24 hours after first hearing on CNN that a Black Hawk had gone down and after many of the men in James Adamouski's unit already had called their wives to say it wasn't them.
The family's third CAO, Maj. Lawrence Powell, 44, has been more helpful, they say.
The Adamouskis married a year ago and planned to move to Boston in August, when James would start his MBA at Harvard.
James Adamouski had forgotten to update his DD Form 93, which dictates, among other things, what happens to your money if you die. Meighan says she struggled for weeks to convince Army officials that he intended for her to receive half of his estate.
Rules of notification
Winborne teaches the way it is done: Notification must take place within four hours of official confirmation of the death, the exception being that it can be done only between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
The spouse is to be notified first, at home. Then parents. Then siblings.
Rehearse the speech, Winborne instructs, but don't sound rehearsed. Spare the gory details. Be sympathetic but strong.
Notifications are never pleasant. One mother recently told the CNO she wished it had been him who died.
At the end of Winborne's seminar, an Army general appears on screen. The military expects "no slip-ups, no oversights and no excuses," he says. "You now represent the Army and your government in a way more personal than any I can think of."
