Bound & determined

By ROSE COX

ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sharon McBride figures she has missed exactly half of her 3-year-old daughter’s short life.

Absences during Lyssa’s first year lasted a week or two, even six after Hurricane Katrina.

When the Army sergeant learned in early 2006 that she was being deployed to Kuwait for a year, she began casting around for a way to remind her daughter that she loved her, even when she couldn’t say it in person.

“She was so young when I left, I was really, really concerned about her forgetting me,” said the single mom.

McBride recalled her own mother’s stories about when her father returned from Vietnam, she and her siblings didn’t recognize him, wouldn’t go to him.

“I worried, ’What am I going to do if this kid doesn’t know me when I come back? It’s just going to tear my heart out.’ “

McBride made DVDs of herself reading story books and sent them to her mom, who was caring for then-2-year-old Lyssa. Her mom plastered pictures of her across Lyssa’s bedroom walls. But DVDs require an adult’s assistance and photos can be easily ruined.

“I thought, what can I do to make her something that is hers, that she can have anytime she wants it?”

She looked at children’s photo albums at the store but they seemed too flimsy for her active toddler.

Came up with a solution

Then the longtime Alaskan employed her skills as a photojournalist with the Army’s public affairs office to solve the problem. She scanned photos of her and Lyssa together to make a book, with the pages laminated and bound at Kinko’s.

The result is a practically indestructible 4- by 5-inch picture book that shows McBride in her uniform, her medals shining; the two of them cuddled in bed; and the pair “riding” Lyssa’s stuffed horse.

The accompanying words are simple: “This is my mommy. My mommy is in the United States Army. Even though she has to go away sometimes, I know she loves me no matter what.”

“She carried it around for an entire year,” McBride said. “She’d sit in her playpen and talk to it. She kissed it and drooled on it and chewed on it when she was teething.”

By the time McBride came home in December 2006, Lyssa’s once-bald head was covered in long, strawberry blond hair. Nearly 3, she was walking, trying new foods, dressing herself.

Best of all, she recognized her mom.

“I got home, and she ran to me. She knew exactly who I was.”

McBride started making Mommy/Daddy Keepsake Books for other soldiers and their children. In July, she partnered with the Armed Services YMCA to supply materials so she could reach more families, and has turned out 20 of the books for children as young as 9 months.

McBride spends about half an hour on each book. She works on them at night and on weekends, fitting them around her full-time job at the Fort Richardson Garrison Public Affairs Office, and two part-time jobs. She does it to ease some of the heartache children feel when parents are deployed.

“I look at some of the photos people send and it really makes me sad,” she said. “This is one more tool in the kit to help maintain a connection while they’re gone.”

Early ones

Some of the first books McBride made were for each of Tiffany and Andrew Horvath’s three children. The Army deployed Andrew to Iraq in October, his second yearlong absence since his son, Anthony, 3, was born.

“The biggest challenge is keeping the children’s memory of their father alive and well while he’s gone,” said Tiffany. Anthony is at that age where he notices all his friends with their daddies.

“He knows he has a daddy because he talks to him on the phone, but it’s hard to reconcile that voice with his father,” his mother said.

Like McBride, Andrew videotaped himself reading stories to the kids before he left. They talk weekly on the phone. But the Keepsake Book is a tangible reminder to Anthony of special things he’s done with his dad.

“We crammed a lot of memories into the book,” Tiffany said. “Before Andrew left, we went on camping trips, to the state fair, to the park. We took pictures of all of it.”

The book shows Anthony and his dad throwing a football, going for a ride in dad’s truck and Andrew tossing his son into the air. Like all McBride’s books, it ends with: “Even though he has to go away sometimes, I know he loves me no matter what.”

“He calls it ’My Daddy Book,’” Tiffany said.

When Andrew came home on leave this past July, their 15-month-old was uncertain about the tall, bald stranger. But Anthony knew just who he was.

“He went running to him, yelling ’Daddy, Daddy, throw me in the air.’”