A Small Town Mourns Its Big Sacrifice In Iraq

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
USA Today
January 25, 2008
Pg. 1
In Maine, deaths of two 'country boys' reflect war's impact on rural America
By Rick Hampson, USA Today
LEE, Maine -- It's a question old-fashioned Yankee wisdom can't answer: How, in just five months, could a town whose population is less than 850 lose two young men in Iraq -- as many as it lost in all of World War II?
Why Lee? No one can say. Not the high school guidance counselor who sees new military recruits come into her office; not the pastor who's leading his Bible class through the Book of Job; not the Red Cross volunteer who helped plan the funerals of Joel House and Blair Emery.
Both were killed last year by roadside bombs during the U.S. military's troop buildup in Iraq. Both had had their tours extended.
"It feels like we're being picked on, and we don't know why," says Gail Rae, the Red Cross volunteer. Joel House used to mow her lawn. "It was a punch in the stomach," says Kendra Ritchie, the guidance counselor. She played the piano at both funerals.
The House and Emery families live a mile apart. "What are the odds?" asks Paul House, Joel's father.
Lee is the nation's smallest municipality to have suffered more than one military death in Iraq, according to military records. It's the epitome of small town, rural America, which has contributed a disproportionate number of recruits -- and suffered disproportionate losses.
A USA TODAY analysis of Pentagon reports indicates that Lee is the smallest of at least four communities with populations under 1,000 that have lost two people in Iraq. Conversely, a score of cities with populations over 100,000 are not listed as the hometown of any servicemember killed in Iraq.
Is Lee unlucky, or in some way typical? "Probably a little of both," says William O'Hare, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey research institute. In a study released in November, O'Hare concluded that rural Americans are dying in disproportionate numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan. What he defines as rural areas -- counties outside metropolitan areas -- account for only 19% of the population; but they have suffered 26% of the fatalities -- 1,102 of the first 4,197 U.S. deaths.
Whatever the reason -- bad luck or demographics -- "our town has given too much," Ritchie says. "Our boys have given too much." She's at her desk, across from the bench where students sit when they come in to talk about their futures. Where Blair and Joel once sat. She keeps tissues handy.
"I have more kids in here everyday (who) want to sign up" for the military, she says. "I have a student who contacted me, he's in college, he said, 'It's not fair that they died and I'm taking the easy way out.' The kids are so idealistic and they want to protect and to fight for their country, and why … " Then she starts to cry.
Each war death is a unique calamity, but in a small town it reverberates "because everybody knows everybody else," says Christian Appy, who has written about how war affects communities.
"The fabric is so tight, it's like we're all related," Ritchie adds. "It's as if they're our own kids."
There are so many reminders: the grassy rise near the door to the high school gym where Blair parked his battered red pickup, the one he decorated with racing stripes and called "the Red Rocket;" the spot at Silver Lake where Joel's father baptized him when he was 11; the soccer field where Blair, No. 17, played midfield, and Joel, No. 22, played defense.
Nicole Worster knew them both. She was best friends with Joel's cousin and used to hang out in Joel's garage while the boys shot pool. Blair was her first date, at Lee's Winter Carnival, when he was in seventh grade, she was in sixth, and she was taller. "It's not just them," she says. "I know their parents and their relatives. … Now we'll have two graves to visit."
Why Lee? Mitchell Bickford, pastor of Lee Baptist Church, has no clue. His reading of Job leads him to conclude: "We're accountable to God. God is not accountable to us."
Little town in the woods
Lee is a rural crossroads about an hour's drive north of Bangor. It has a post office, two churches, a general store/diner/gas station, a small ski area, a couple of sawmills and no traffic light. The largest employer is Lee Academy, the high school.
As kids, Joel and Blair never wanted to leave. They played on the same teams, hunted in the same woods, fished the same waters. But by high school, where they were a year apart, they were opposites: one a flamboyant extrovert, the other a taciturn introvert.
Blair was one of the popular kids, and a bit of a rebel. He liked to color his hair. He got his truck stuck "mudding" in the woods, piled up the speeding tickets, spun his tires. He attracted the prettiest girls. He was more an athlete than a student. Before Blair was sent to Iraq, says his father, Bill, "he didn't even know it existed."
He knew baseball; the yearbook lists his curveball as his "best feature." Standing on the mound in the game of his life -- the Eastern Maine high school championship in Bangor -- he was so relaxed he waved to a late-arriving teacher. He pitched a complete game. Lee won, 6-2. The banner hangs in the gym.
At the end of his senior year, Blair walked into the office of admissions director Jeff Wright with his entourage and tossed him a camera. "Take our picture," he said. "We're gonna be famous." Joel was different -- "almost painfully shy," Ritchie says. His father, Paul, calls him "kind of a loner, a homebody."
But he taught himself to play the guitar and performed at the high school talent show and with the school band. The guitar, his father decided, "was his way of talking."
"They were a couple of good country boys, just having fun here in little old Lee," Joel's father says.
The boys' decisions to join the Army after their graduations -- Blair in 2002, Joel a year later -- were motivated by patriotic sentiment, family military tradition and economic necessity.
Their fathers had started out as woodsmen, slinging their chainsaws and selling lumber to the paper mills, as men had for generations. But the independent logger has been displaced by big, expensive machines that can harvest 150 cords a day instead of 10. Paul House is now a hunting and fishing guide; Bill Emery works for a logging company for an hourly wage.
"Before, you made a living. Now, you survive week to week," Emery says. "We didn't have $100,000 to say, 'Here, go to college.' "
Blair and Joel each saw military service as a means to an end -- money for vocational education and credentials for employment. (Blair wanted to go into law enforcement; Joel talked of becoming a game warden.)
They were typical, says UNH's O'Hare. In much of rural America, he says, "young people lack opportunity and the military looks like a better option. Mechanization has reduced employment in logging in Maine, farming in the Midwest, coal mining in Appalachia."
"Kids say, 'I'm going to join the Army and see the world,' " Ritchie says. "How else are they going to get out of Lee, Maine?"
Second tours in Iraq
Blair joined a military police unit, Joel the 1st Cavalry. Both had an uneventful first year-long tour in Iraq; they once had breakfast together in Baghdad. It was in Iraq where Blair met his future wife, Chu Pak, who also was in the Army.
Joel and Blair returned to Iraq for a second tour in 2006. The next year each was wounded -- Joel in February when a suicide bomber tried to drive a truck into his barracks, Blair in April when a roadside bomb exploded by his convoy. Each also lost a friend. Blair told his family his best friend died in his arms.
By summer 2007, Blair was disillusioned -- "bitter at the world," his father says. "Iraq was different from what he thought it'd be." He suspected some of the Iraqis he was training by day were planting roadside bombs at night. "He said, 'We don't know who we're fightin'!' " his dad recalls.
Joel never complained, his father says. After the barracks attack he posted a photo on his MySpace page that showed his sleeping bag with wreckage behind it. The caption: "My sleeping bag got dirty."
On June 23, his mother's birthday, Joel was killed on patrol in Taji when a bomb exploded under his Humvee. He was 22.
On Nov. 30, about five weeks after he originally was to have gone home, Blair was killed on patrol in Baqouba when a bomb exploded under his Humvee. He was 24.
Worster says the sorrow over Joel's death turned into raw shock: "How could this happen twice?"
 
Again, a flag-draped coffin was unloaded at the Bangor airport. Again, people lined the streets of neighboring Lincoln as a body arrived at the funeral home. Again, the governor came to a memorial service at the school gym, the only place big enough for the crowd.
"This town has kept me going," Bill Emery says. "I don't think I could have done it in a bigger town. Everyone comes and supports the family. The phone calls, people stopping in, cards, donations, the food -- it's been tremendous."
When Joel died, one of the first people to call on the Houses was Bill Emery. When Blair died, Paul House was at the Emerys' door. The two fathers have been consoling each other ever since.
They talk about how sons so different in life were so similar in death. Both had their military service extended; both were wounded and lost close comrades; both were manning a gun turret when they were killed.
Paul, 51, is a born-again Christian who believes he will see his son in heaven. "God doesn't make mistakes," he says. "It's hard, but I have never felt so close to God." He hugged the military officers who brought the news of Joel's death.
Bill, 55, lacks such faith: "I have too many 'whys?' and 'what-ifs?' "
They also differ a bit on the war.
Paul supports it enthusiastically. He says the Iraqis need support and that the United States would be selfish to withdraw and let the country fall into anarchy.
Bill wants to support the cause for which his son died, but he can't ignore Blair's misgivings about the war, or the extension that cost Blair his life: "That's what hurts so much. He coulda been back. … I get bitter about that."
Every time a student tells Ritchie he's planning to enter the military, "I ask myself, 'Am I watching you go off to your death?' "
But Ritchie, who opposes the war, says the loss of Joel and Blair has tended to stifle honest talk about its merits. "It's hard, because their families want them to be heroes. And they are, but I don't think (the government is) giving the troops the support they need. I get bitter sometimes about that."
She points to a photo in the 2002 yearbook of the varsity soccer team. Blair, No. 17, is standing behind Joel, No. 22.
In spring, when the earth thaws, that order will be echoed at the cemetery, where Blair's remains will be buried directly behind Joel's. That's how Worster and everyone else will find them, a couple of good country boys who went to war and didn't come back.
Contributing: Paul Overberg
 
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