Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

Homefront heroes

The childhood of second-grader Jake “Dutch” Tatum juxtaposes wonderment with anxiety.

His dad, an Army warrant officer with the 82nd Airborne Division, leaps out of planes and maps out Taliban hiding spots in Afghanistan. He disappears for months at a time, from what Dutch calls “that airport where the Army leaves for, like, secret missions.”

“I wish he had an easy job and not a hard job,” the 8-year-old wrote in an essay. “When he is gone, he puts me in charge of our house and it is a hard job to do.”

Tatum is among roughly 100 children whose writing appears in “My Hero: Military Kids Write About Their Moms and Dads.” The book portrays the military kid subculture’s reaction to the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan through essays and artwork submitted to the Armed Services YMCA.

Authors Allen Appel and Mike Rothmiller, a former sailor, gathered the most poignant entries and drawings.

“We wanted to represent these kids’ emotions across the board, from happiness to complete sadness,” Rothmiller said. “This shows people who don’t serve in the military all the emotions involved, how resilient they are and really how adult they are.”

Their sentiments are tinged with pain — and slang. Military jargon appears throughout: mom going TDY, dad doing PT, the lady at the PX and, sadly, the threat of IEDs. The authors didn’t shy away from entries by children whose parents died in theater.

“He went to Afghanistan and sacrificed his life for his country and the people in it,” wrote Thomas McMahon, 13, son of Army Lt. Col. Michael McMahon, who was killed in action in 2004. “When I found out that he had died, I was devastated but I knew he was in a better place and that he will always look over me.”

The ages of the essayists, ranging from 5 to the mid-teens, leant a certain authenticity to their writing, Appel said. “I noticed really quickly that they were completely honest,” he said. “It’s a cleverness that, if you were trying to write as dialogue, you just couldn’t come up with it.”

Jake McCrea, the 12-year-old son of an instructor at the U.S. Military Academy, wrote his essay during his dad’s long deployment to Baghdad’s Green Zone. Accustomed to playing sports and board games with his dad, their interactions were reduced to 15-minute phone calls at odd hours.

“It was very hard,” McCrea said. “I missed him so much. I was constantly worried about him.”

Coping with a deployed parent is a central theme of the essays.

“If the kid is old enough to understand, they’re thinking, ‘All I know is mom or dad is in a war zone, and there’s a possibility they may be killed,’” Rothmiller said. “Every time someone knocks on the door, every time the phone rings, there it is.”

But the essayists’ sadness is in many cases offset by profound pride. The kids describe their moms and dads in superheroic terms. They’re bad-guy hunters, masters of the push-up and parents who — when at home — are always around to help with homework.

Claire Zupan, 13, wrote that her Army colonel dad was deployed during Christmas, “which was very hard on the family. He recorded himself on a tape, singing, playing the guitar and talking to us. I know it sounds simple, but when you are in a situation like that ... it is like the touch of an angel.”

The kids also offer accidental humor.

The daughter of a Navy E-8 can’t wait for her mom’s promotion “so my family can get good parking.” Another boasts his dad can run two miles in five minutes. An airman’s son is proud his dad gave up cigarettes, so he won’t waste so much time on smoke breaks.

“If someone picks this up in 10 years ... if we’re still in Afghanistan or Iraq or who knows where,” Rothmiller said, “the emotion of these kids will still be the same when their parents deploy.”