Reservist re-enlists to keep peace in Kosovo

He passed his spare time helping Kosovo children at a school.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
BAZETTA -- Lakeview Middle School teacher John Terbovich of Bazetta had to make a life-changing decision.
The date was coming up to re-enlist or retire from the Ohio Army National Guard in November 2003, when he learned he'd be deployed into active service if he stayed.
"I talked it over with my wife. I decided to re-enlist so at least I can say I did 20-some years and went on a deployment and did something official," he said. "I didn't want to back out just because I was being activated. It was the right thing to do."
Terbovich, 41, is a 12-year teacher in Cortland, where he is an intervention specialist as well as a math teacher. As intervention specialist, he works with children who have learning disabilities.
He also has two teenage children and knew that leaving for active service would mean leaving his family behind for a year. His wife, Krista, a teacher in Champion, gave her blessing.
"It was pretty stressful for her knowing I would be gone all that time, but she supported me. She knew what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it," he said.
A peacekeeper
After 20 years of being a reservist, teacher and family man, he left to serve his country as a peacekeeper. The toughest part about his year of active service was knowing the family had to take care of his responsibilities at home.
"That tears you up more than anything -- missing birthdays and holidays," he said.
He and about 25 other members of the Bravo Company of the 237th Forward Support Battalion in Austintown left In May 2004 for training at Camp Atterbury, Ind.
There they joined with nearly 1,000 other Ohio National Guard reservists from a dozen units. July 17, the soldiers arrived in Germany for another month of preparation, arriving in Kosovo -- a province of Serbia, the core of the former Yugoslavia -- on Aug. 15 and staying until Feb. 28. He returned home in the spring.
Terbovich was one of 1,800 soldiers in Task Force Falcon stationed at the 1,000-acre Camp Bondsteel Army base. Bondsteel and Camp Monteith are base camps where the Multinational Brigade made up of several countries provides peacekeeping. The base was built in 1999 on farmland near Uresevic in Southeast Kosovo. It is the biggest new U.S. military camp since Vietnam.
The situation
Because 90 percent of Kosovo's population are of Albanian rather than Serbian origin, the region enjoyed a high degree of autonomy in the old Yugoslavia. But Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic revoked the country's autonomy in 1989 in his campaign for a "Greater Serbia." The United States entered the region under President Clinton after Milosevic began to kill off the Albanians.
Terbovich's training in Indiana and Germany focused on how to avoid being killed in mine fields, how to work with interpreters and how to interact with the non-English speaking people of Kosovo. The military estimates the country has a million land mines unaccounted for, he said.
His duties
Terbovich's job at Bondsteel was to give daily reports on the condition of the American military vehicles, mostly humvees. He would also make visits to Pristina, Kosovo's capital, to give reports to the United Nations, he said.
He would work closely with Kellogg, Brown & amp; Root Services, the large Houston-based contractor that handles most of the vehicle-related maintenance and part ordering on the base. His job was to inspect their work.
In his spare time, he was drawn to the plight of the people living in this former Communist Bloc country -- especially the children. He and other soldiers made weekly visits to a school near the camp, where he became very attached to the kids.
He took his digital camera on the trips, and the children would flock to him, wanting their picture taken. They were not used to having their pictures taken because most of their families did not own a camera, he said.
Surprising poverty
It was surprising to him, Terbovich said, that people in Europe could be so poor. Most of them had no running water or toilets in their homes, and electricity was used sparingly. Their homes were heated with wood.
Back home, Terbovich's Lakeview students and staff members wanted to do something to stay in touch, and they began writing him letters. He wrote back to every one, he said.
Over the months, the Lakeview community sent dozens of boxes of school supplies and other things Terbovich could take to his adopted students.
"When I took the things to the school, the people there said, 'These things came from children?' They couldn't believe it because in Kosovo, the children have very little," he said, adding that the supplies from Ohio would be enough to last the school at least two years.
Meeting civilians
At the Army base, Terbovich came in contact with many local civilians working for the contractor. Friends from Ohio sent boxes of new and used clothing to him, and the soldiers in Terbovich's office gave them away at the base.
He marvels at how thankful the people were, noting the local population is said to have an 80 percent unemployment rate. "They are so glad we are there keeping peace and all the little things we did for them," he said.
On trips between the two bases, Terbovich would usually keep his camera at the ready. The photographs were shared with friends and students at Lakeview. The photos show garbage and weeds alongside the roads, buildings bombed and burned, and people driving makeshift vehicles made of large Rototillers. What he saw made him more thankful for the life we have here, he said.
Terbovich considers himself fortunate that his military service did not put his life in obvious danger. He did, however, always wear his flak jacket and helmet and carry his firearm whenever he was not on the base.
He retired in June as a Sgt. 1st Class from the National Guard with 23 years of service and is focusing on completing his master's degree at Kent State University.
runyan@vindy.com