Posted on: Monday, April 11, 2005

War strains family budgets

By Mike Billington and Ron French
Gannett News Service

America's global war on terrorism will punch an $18,000 hole in Sharon Clark's family budget this year.

Her husband, Dwight, a bus driver and Navy reservist, left earlier this month for a yearlong tour in Southwest Asia. While on active duty, his military pay falls far short of his wages from DART, Delaware's bus and commuter rail system.

"I am so terrified of the days to come," Clark said. "The bills don't change, they don't get lower just because we're losing money while my husband is away. I don't know how we're going to manage."

The Clarks, of New Castle, Del., are not unusual. Across America, thousands of household budgets are being strained to the breaking point when wage earners who serve in the National Guard or Reserve are called to active duty.

While their loved ones dodge snipers and roadside bombs in Iraq, Guard members' families fight their own battles at home. It is a life of contradictions. Many are financially strapped and exhausted by the strains of single parenthood, yet have become increasingly patriotic.

How those families respond will have a lasting impact on the National Guard, as citizen soldiers decide whether to re-enlist in a service far more time-consuming and dangerous than the one they signed up for.

National Guard members and reservists now account for about 40 percent of U.S. troops in Iraq, and have suffered about 20 percent of the casualties.

The plight of these families has struck a chord with lawmakers at both the state and federal levels. Many states, as a result, have taken steps to help these families. In Delaware, for example, state employees called to active duty while serving in the Guard or the Reserve do not lose any money.

But many families are still left out.

"I think it's cruel and unusual punishment to make the families suffer this way," said Sharon Clark, 41. "These soldiers and sailors are already putting their lives on the line for this country. To ask us to also bear this burden isn't right."

Ted Kozlowski, 49, is a lieutenant colonel in the Guard. He spent one year working with detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, then was home in Redford, Mich., for six weeks before shipping out to Iraq to work with prisoners there.

Teri Kozlowski quit one of her two part-time jobs so she could shuttle kids to and from school, something her husband had done. That left the family with $15,000 to $20,000 less annual income.

The city of Oak Park, Mich., where Ted Kozlowski is a sergeant in the Police Department, dropped the family's health insurance because of his long absence. The insurance provided by the Guard forced the family to switch doctors and wrestle with rejected claims.

Proposals in Congress include military pay raises, delayed mortgage payments for families buying homes under federal loan programs and Sen. Tom Carper's plan to give tax breaks to employers who pay the difference between a soldier's salary and what he or she would have earned on the job.

Congress also has authorized the secretary of education to delay student loan repayments for Guard and Reserve troops on active duty.

Despite all the struggles of the Kozlowski family, Teri Kozlowski won't ask her husband to quit.

"We try to keep a lot of this from him — he's so stressed," she said. "Freedom isn't free."

But sometimes soldiers make sacrifices, even the ones without uniforms sitting at home.

"In light of the changes in our world, someone has to do it," Teri Kozlowski said. "If they need me, I'll go, too."