Families of deployed troops face pressures

By James Hannah

Worrying about families back home can affect a soldier and his unit, one official said.

Military spouse Maria Angel felt like she was drowning — and it wasn’t just because of the water.

The Columbus-area woman, whose handyman husband was deployed in January, had a pipe burst in the bathroom.

“Water is spewing everywhere,” she said in exasperation during a telephone interview. “To have an equal partner in everything we do sort of plucked up and taken away is very overwhelming.”

Angel, who cares for sons ages 2 and 5 while holding down a full-time job as a high school special education teacher, is just one of many military spouses dealing with leaky pipes, broken dishwashers, overgrown lawns and other household chores while their partners serve long, repeated tours of duty overseas.

To highlight the struggles of military families at home, the Ohio National Guard held a series of town hall meetings around the state in May and June.

“If a soldier is worried about the health and safety of his wife and children back home, he is a danger to himself and his unit,” said Lt. Col. Robert Bramlish, director of family programs for the Ohio guard.

That is more important than any care package anyone can send, said Meredith Leyva, founder of Operation Homefront, a San Antonio, Texas-based group that is spearheading volunteer efforts for military families. The group has 4,500 volunteers and served 33,000 military spouses and families last year. The highest demand is for mortgage services and auto repair.

They’re not the only ones volunteering.

More than 6,000 military families have signed up for GreenCare for Troops, a program operated by the New Prague, Minn.-based Project EverGreen. The program has 1,400 volunteers around the nation mowing, fertilizing, raking and performing other lawn-care services for free.

“That is a huge, huge lift in comfort to our soldiers in knowing that their families are being taken care of at home,” said Joy Westenberg, who manages the program. “I’ve heard it over and over and over again.”

Army reservist Lance Lynch and his wife, Virginia, who have a 13-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, bought a house in Las Vegas just before he was deployed to Iraq.

The community association required that the bare backyard be landscaped. That would have cost the couple about $5,000, creating a financial hardship.

Project EverGreen contacted a local landscaping company, which used donated materials to irrigate, lay sod and plant 20 plants and two trees. The yard was transformed into a sea of red, yellow, orange and purple blooms, creating an attractive play area for the children.

“It’s mind-boggling what they’ve done,” said Virginia Lynch, 37. “When I woke up I about fell down the stairs because I thought it was a mistake. It was so much more than we had hoped for.”