TRUMBULL COUNTY Returning from Iraq, Cika visits

The Army captain was with the 82nd Airborne.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
LIBERTY -- Army Capt. Patricia Cika wanted the 150 sixth-graders at W.S. Guy Middle School to know their letters "were heartwarming and brought a lot of comfort to me and my friends in Iraq."
"Thank you from the bottom of my heart," she said Thursday. She said the kids' letters were sincere and she read them all.
Cika recently returned home from Iraq, where she was chief of operational law for the 82nd Airborne Division.
Wearing her dress uniform, Cika, a 1993 graduate of Liberty High School and a 1997 graduate of Ohio State University, spoke to the pupils at an assembly Thursday afternoon. With her was her finance, Army Capt. Daniel Froehlich, also with the 82nd Airborne, whom she will marry July 17.
Ellen King, who was Cika's sixth-grade language arts teacher, described her former pupil as being freethinking and independent. "Patty did her work and was very friendly, but if she disagreed with you, she always had something to back it up," King said.
Now 29, Cika perhaps saw some of her past self in the faces of the sixth-graders.
Questions from pupils
The kids wanted to know if she had killed anyone, if anyone had shot at her, if any of her friends had died, if she had ever saved anyone, what she missed about home -- and a host of other things.
"I never had to shoot at anyone, but I always had to take my M-4 rifle with me, even to the bathroom and to bed," she said.
She told her audience that she did not save anybody's life while she was in Iraq or Afghanistan. "I was not a hero, but I knew a lot of heroes there," she said.
She said the Iraqi people are generally friendly and appreciate what the United States is trying to do for their nation.
Froehlich said there are good things happening. The United States is building schools and health clinics, helping to rebuild roads and power lines, and drilling water wells in Afghanistan and Iraq. Political freedom is coming along, he said.
Cika wrote several columns for The Vindicator over the past few months, in which she described her experiences in Iraq. Her columns were used in language arts and social studies at Guy school, King said.
What she missed
Cika, daughter of Dolores and the late Andy Cika, said that besides her family and friends, it was the small things that she missed the most about home while in the Middle East, such as carpeting and a shower that works.
Froehlich said he missed being able to go where he wanted without feeling in danger, and toilets that flush.
"You pay more attention to the things around you, like trees and greenery, that you used to take for granted," Cika said.
She admitted she was frightened at times, but not so afraid that she wanted to come home and leave her buddies.
Cika said a friend died in Iraq, and while it was very sad, she took comfort in knowing that he died doing what he wanted to be doing -- serving his country.
At the end of the assembly, two pupils presented Cika with flowers and a stuffed animal, and she gave King and the pupils a U.S. flag that had flown in Afghanistan and Iraq.
King's sixth-graders also have been writing to James E. Clinton, Navy aviation electrician's mate aboard the USS Enterprise. Clinton, son of Beverly and John Clinton of Liberty, graduated from Liberty High School in 2001. Beverly is a teacher's aide at Guy School and Blott Elementary.
Clinton talked to the pupils a couple of months ago in a similar assembly.
King said writing letters to military people helps the kids understand that the war is real and that it involves real people they know.
alcorn@vindy.com