Military moms share thoughts on Afghanistan plan
LINK http://www.southtownstar.com/news/1922525,120609mamastellobama.article

PDF Military moms share thoughts on Afghanistan plan __ The SouthtownStar __ News

December 6, 2009

BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK

President Barack Obama decided that sending 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan is the best course in the eight-year war there. He’d talked with military leaders and his own advisers.

What Regina Byther wouldn’t have given to talk to him, too.

If only the president she voted for – and who sent her a condolence letter when her daughter died in March from combat wounds – had looked her in the eye and told her why the war is going on for at least two more years, she might better support his plan.

Illinois already has lost 44 soldiers in Afghanistan since 2001, and another 158 in Iraq since 2003, according to the Defense Department. Nearly 1,200 more have been wounded on both fronts.

Given the chance, Susan Stanker would have encouraged Obama to finish the job that cost her son’s life. Maribeth Dulkowski might have asked for better supplies for her son currently freezing in some small Afghan town. Debbie Kohany would have reminded him not to forget troops like her daughter and her friends once they’re back.

As soldiers’ mothers, they have packed up supplies, lived in hospital rooms and joined veterans’ efforts. With a fierce love, some signed enlistment papers for kids determined to serve at 17. And they accepted flags, on behalf of a grateful nation, for their children killed in action.

“I know fathers care, but I don’t think it’s the same as a mom. It’s a bond and I don’t think some people understand it,” Byther said.

“I would die for them,” Kohany said. “As a mom, there’s just something you feel in your heart you never felt before. It’s just different.”

For these moms, this war is more than a foreign policy or budget decision. It’s personal.

**

Debbie Kohany’s daughter just returned from a year in Afghanistan.If sending tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan will finish the job, then Debbie Kohany supports it, even though such a strategy surely sends her daughter, Illinois National Guardsman Sgt. Jennifer Kohany, back to the war zone she just left.

But deploying new troops is only half the issue, said Kohany, who wants President Obama to pay more attention to veterans after they return.

“Don’t forget these soldiers after they come home,” she wishes she could tell the president. “These soldiers are coming back and they can’t find work. That should be one of his ways of saying ‘thank you.’

“Take care of these kids,” Kohany continued. “They have taken care of us. Find them jobs and take care of their mental health. They have done one, two and three tours.”

Obama didn’t once use the word “veteran” in his 35-minute speech Tuesday night when he spoke of military and civilian involvement. He never laid out any plans for returning vets, or even mentioned them, beyond setting a July 2011 date to begin the permanent withdrawal. The costs he quoted referred to the battlefield, not the aftermath at home.

“You either have to send more (troops) to get the job done or take them all out because there’s not enough there,” Kohany said. “And now we’re starting to lose more and more and more. So we do need to go in and take care of business, and get it done and get out.”

Kohany’s daughter returned unharmed to Oak Lawn in September after a year in Kabul, where she worked as an intelligence analyst. Jennifer was lucky to fall right back into her job as an intelligence research specialist with a federal drug task force in Chicago.

“She’s got a big opportunity, unlike a lot of soldiers who’ve come back,” her mother said. Still, the 24-year-old is notedly quieter, especially when they watch the news together.

“They all have a degree of PTSD, every one of them, Jenny included,” Debbie Kohanay said. “There’s a change. I’ve seen it. These are things she has got to address. I think she has flashbacks of things I’ll never know. She did things I’ll never know.”

Sgt. Kohany’s service to the guard lasts a total of six years and runs through 2012. Though the guard says its units get three years home before redeploying, she’s likely going back because of her specific job, her mother said.

“Do I want her to? That was the hardest year of my entire life, was her being gone. But she signed up to do this. And if she has to go, we’ll get through it again,” continued Kohany, who leaned hard on her faith to get her through the separation.

“I hope it won’t be her. But she’s got friends over there. She knows people over there. She knows when she put her name on that paper, she knew what she was signing up for, she was prepared.

“They all are.”

LAUREN FITZPATRICK

**

Regina Byther prays no other mother will have to grieve like her. Regina Byther would have fought her way to Afghanistan the minute she learned her daughter, Simone Robinson, had been hurt in January in an explosion.

She had to settle for meeting her badly burned daughter in Germany, at a hospital that stabilized her enough to fly to Texas.

Two months later, on March 1, Robinson died. The 21-year-old Thornton High School grad left a baby daughter, Nyzia, who’s now 3.

No one else should lose a child like this, said Byther, of University Park, who hopes her president knows what he’s doing.

“Everybody knows they (are) going to come home one way or another, alive or dead, and I’d rather see everyone come home alive,” Byther said in her living room, full of her daughter’s medals, honors and photos. “I’m praying Obama’s making the right decision and if he can, get this war over as quickly as possible. And bring them troops home, safely, everybody come home safe.”

Because victory in Afghanistan doesn’t matter anymore to this grieving mother of five daughters, who now is raising her granddaughter.

“So be it. People win, people lose, you know? I mean, I wish it would just end now, win or lose, it has to end,” she said. “I know they swore to deliver what they supposed to do when they joined and everything like that.”

Byther didn’t see the speech. She hasn’t watched the news since her daughter deployed. First it worried her, then seeing news of other fallen soldiers just hurt too much.

Robinson enlisted in the National Guard thinking the military would pay for her education. At 17, she needed her mother’s signature. Byther asked the recruiters if Robinson would get sent to war.

Their answer: No.

“I thought it would be better for her than to go into the Army, but I never thought there would be a war that she would have to go to,” she said. “I wouldn’t have signed.”

If Robinson, known as “Big Mone,” was scared when she left, she didn’t tell her mother.

“She was just getting everything prepared to go. I’m very proud she did go, and stood up for her country. And she wasn’t out here in these streets like all these teenagers and kids getting murdered now. She was doing a good deed when she left.”

Robinson’s unit, the Crestwood-based 634th Brigade Support Battalion, was training Afghan troops. On Jan. 17, a bomb exploded near her security post near Camp Eggers in Kabul, injuring her and five other soldiers, and instantly killing another.

As she was carried through the streets of Kabul on a stretcher, she sang out a hymn, her mother was told.

“Singing? Lord Jesus, I hope she was singing a church song,” Byther thought at the time. “And she was. I knew God was with her then.”

So Byther continues to pray for the soldiers.

“I’m not against the war or anything or the service or anything, but I just pray, just get them home.”

LAUREN FITZPATRICK

**

Maribeth Dulkowski’s son John just started a tour in Afghanistan; his older brother, Matt, could get called back.

The slam of a car door makes her sit straight up in her Tinley Park home. Hearing more than one door terrifies her.

What if those cars contain Marines bearing the news from Afghanistan she dreads most about John?

“I never felt like that before when they were in Iraq,” she said, apologizing for her tears.

Both Marines, Matt completed two tours in Iraq, in 2005 and 2006, and John’s first deployment overseas, to Iraq, was in 2007.

The mother of four boys arguably has done her part in the two-front “War on Terror,” though she’d tell you the sacrifice isn’t as much as other parents have made. And she follows news of the war closely.

“It’s been going on for eight years already,” Dulkowski said. “How long do you stay in that country? Slowly, let’s get out of there. It’s not going to be winnable. I don’t think it can be.

“Granted, people say we’re fighting the war over there so we won’t have the terrorists over here. But you know? They keep having more terrorists come out. That’s how I don’t see how we could win because there’s always someone else who’s willing to make another IED,” Dulkowski continued.

Matt, 23, finished his active duty and moved back to Tinley Park. But he isn’t necessarily done for good.

“They can call him back if they need to,” his mother said. “He was just saying the other day that President Obama may want to send (30,000) extra troops. I says, ‘Well, you’re not going.’ He says, ‘I don’t know where they’re going to get (30,000) extra troops if they don’t call people.”

And John isn’t even prepared to do the job he started in October, the 22-year-old told his mother on a recent phone call.

” ‘We need better weapons,’ that’s what he said,” and better infantry pay, she said.

Since Oct. 5, Dulkowski has mailed seven boxes containing gloves and thermal underwear, good socks and foot warmers, cans of soup and a pot to heat them in.

“Today he said it’s very cold there, and he’s in a tent and he’s cold,” she said.

“My husband thinks the government should provide whatever they need out there. So my husband says, ‘You know, can’t they provide him with all that stuff?’ “

They probably should, she admits. Meanwhile she’ll be the one making sure cold is the last thing John worries about on his mission.

In September, knowing he’d soon be shipping out to Afghanistan, John was a little anxious, his mother said.

“I think he kind of wanted to go in a way. He kind of likes that adrenaline,” she said.

Still, her son was scared after hearing the ominous warnings from his superiors, she said.

“They tell him, ‘You may not come back,’ and then he tells me.”

LAUREN FITZPATRICK

‘Soldier’ was the last job they knew

Returning vets struggle to find jobs

November 11, 2009

LINK: http://www.southtownstar.com/news/1877276,111109vets.article

PDF Returning vets struggle to find jobs __ The SouthtownStar __ News

BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK

Returning from war lets soldiers and their families breathe a minute, as Kerry Poplin knows. Her husband, Brian, is due home from Afghanistan on Thursday, bearing only the scars he sustained during a previous tour in Iraq.

But for Poplin, who deployed to escape unemployment, coming home leaves him and his family in a “now what?” situation. In a lousy economy, leaving the battle zone is only the beginning for troops whose only recent job has been “soldier.”

Unemployment was 5.6 percent and rising last year across the United States as the country entered a recession.

For veterans of the war on terror, however, it was 7.3 percent, according to the Labor Department.

Unemployment for vets ages 25 to 34 also measured 7.3 percent. But for young vets aged 18 to 24 years, it was nearly double that, at 14.1 percent.

Veterans Day today honors all who have served the United States in the armed forces.

There is no draft. Each soldier signed up to serve, the bulk of them after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, knowing full well they’d be sent overseas to war.

They’re not afraid to work. Even ones whose physical injuries won’t let them return to their previous jobs are seeking employment. The jobs just aren’t there to be had, according to Southland soldiers looking for work in law enforcement and medical fields. Military experience doesn’t count for much, they say.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order this week seeking to hire more veterans to work in federal agencies. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn also recently signed legislation aimed at getting more vets on the payroll.

Meanwhile, a lot of area veterans have gone back to school, mostly on the post 9-11 GI Bill that pays for tuition and doles out a $1,742 monthly housing allowance, too, according to Debbie Wills, an admissions recruiter at Moraine Valley Community College.

“They’re here going to school because they couldn’t secure a job,” she said.

Brian Poplin, of Mokena, is unemployed

Brian Poplin went back to war, this time in Afghanistan, last November because his airplane mechanic job disappeared and he couldn’t find another.

Poplin was doing his annual two weeks’ training with the Army National Guard in April 2008 when word that ATA, his employer of 17 years, folded. He turned back to the military as a way to take care of his wife and children.

“It has been almost back-to-back tours for me, but after losing my job I had to do something to support my family,” he wrote from Afghanistan. “Needless to say I am glad this tour is over.”

He has been counting the days until his return — now confirmed as Thursday — on a Facebook page his family can read.

The 41-year-old father of five joined the military in December 2000.

“Enlisting was something that I always wanted to do, so I did it so I would not have any regrets later,” he said. “Of course the terrorist attacks of 2001 were right around the corner.”

His wife, Kerry, gave her blessing, she said with a grim laugh from their Mokena home.

“As a recruiter told me, ‘We never deploy.’ Great. I could be a guard wife. I can’t do full time.”

Since then, she’s held down the home during four deployments over nearly six years, including two tours in war zones.

Along with surviving the rigors of war and a job loss, Poplin underwent treatment for cancer of the jaw.

During his recuperation, he got word his civilian job was closing, so he moved his family from Las Vegas to Mokena to be closer to Kerry’s family in Oak Forest.

“We’ve been through so much as a family,” she said. “It makes us who we are.”

During his current tour in Afghanistan, Poplin has served as an aircraft maintenance technician and a helicopter gunner, with more than 250 combat flying hours.

He’s spent his career working for the military or for ATA. The airline industry remains weak, so he’s thinking about going back to school once he’s back home.

“I suppose in the troubled economy these days that a lot of vets, young and old, are turning to using the GI Bill and returning to school to later return to a competitive work marketplace,” Poplin said. “I plan on being one of these vets myself.”

Deandre Minniefield ‘juggling’

Cpl. Deandre Minniefield is juggling like mad.

He’s been home from Afghanistan for five months and has taken four classes toward a law enforcement degree. Minniefield and his wife have two children, ages 9 and 5. The 27-year-old has a full-time job at OfficeMax, and he’s still attached to a Crestwood-based Illinois Army National Guard unit.

But that’s what it takes right now for him to make ends meet for his wife and kids while planning for a better future, hopefully as a police officer.

“It’s OK,” he said of his situation. “It is what it is.”

Minniefield is taking the Cook County sheriff’s entrance exam on Dec. 1. He’s already tested at other western suburban departments.

“When I first went into the military, I said ‘I found something I think I’ll be real good at,’” he said.

He spent much of his year in Afghanistan with Battery B, 2nd Battalion, 122nd Field Artillery training and mentoring local troops and police. He describes his time there as simply “rough,” declining to elaborate.

His mother, Donna Minniefield, said he’s been treated at a VA hospital since coming home.

“He has his days,” she said. “A problem with his ear from the bombs getting blown up over there.”

Her son spends as much time as he can with his wife and kids, but he gets home from work at 3 p.m. and leaves for school at 5.

After graduating from high school in 2001 and lacking direction, he enlisted in 2005 in the Illinois Guard.

“At that time I wasn’t working or anything. I said ‘I’ll go into the military.’ I could jumpstart myself,” he said. “The military works different for different folks. It helped me out a lot.”

But since his return from war, life is just different.

“Once you do that you’re not the same person when you come back,” he said. “I thought I would be the same, but I’m not. You don’t see it but you know it.”

Jason Heldt, of Crete, a full-time dad

Jason Heldt could patch up your bullet wound, stanch your bleeding or diagnose a skin ailment in the heat of battle.

And for 14 total months in Iraq, the Navy medic treated the injuries of U.S. Marines, while surviving six explosions himself.

But he’s been jobless since August 2008 so Heldt’s current full-time job is single dad to 6-year-old Sophia. The 27-year-old spends afternoons picking her up from the bus stop, walking her through homework and wishing he could contribute a paycheck to his parents’ household in Crete where he and Sophia live.

nd maybe, just maybe, he could move his fiancee and their 2-year-old son from California to Illinois, to live with him and Sophia, his daughter from a previous marriage.

Heldt, in the Navy for five years, will tell you during a job interview how battlefield training makes him a better hire in your private medical practice or hospital emergency room. But he fears employers hear “war” and believe the worst.

During the more than two-dozen interviews he’s had for medical assistant jobs, Heldt said he hasn’t been asked about his qualifications. They hear he’s seen action overseas, and the interview is derailed.

“First thing out of their mouth, when we come to that point of the interview, is, ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry.’ he said. “I did what I did, I’m OK with it. I don’t want your sympathy, I want a job.”

Heldt also has post-traumatic stress disorder, which he thinks makes prospective employers wary.

The eldest of five boys, Heldt joined the Navy at age 19, after trying college and a couple dead-end jobs. He was sent to Iraq for the first time in 2005.

Unless Heldt is selling his medic experience as a specific qualification, he doesn’t say much about his military record to potential employers, calling it an unfair advantage over others.

“I didn’t play the military card,” he said. “I should. I got bills to pay and kids to feed.”

The obligation to his kids tempts Heldt to return to a job he knows and is good at — combat medic. But it’s those same kids who stop him in his tracks.

“I’m not willing to risk a run of bad luck to have two fatherless children,” he said.

Phil Bell, Orland Park, injured and in school

Phil Bell’s shrapnel-riddled body just couldn’t hack the rigors of the electrician apprenticeship he began before shipping off to Iraq.

He finished a year and a half of rehab. He tried to complete the program’s second year, but the strain was too much on his neck, back and legs — hurt in March 2006 near Fallujah when Bell’s Humvee was hit by an explosive.

Though he’s walking fine now, he still has some 15 to 20 pieces of metal in his back that shift if he moves too much.

“At the end of the day, it was hurting too much,” Bell said. “The metal still cuts the muscles up.”

So Sgt. 1st Class Phil Bell walked away from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Chicago, and the military, and into an academic setting. When he medically retired on Jan. 1, 2008, he’d been on active duty and in the reserves for about 14 1/2 years.

The 33-year-old is studying accounting at DePaul, at the university’s Loop campus, with the help of the Veterans Administration’s Vocational Rehab program.

“Some day I’ll be able to get an office job where my body will be able to work,” he said.

Bell grew up in Orland Park and graduated from Carl Sandburg High School. Following in the footsteps of his father, a Vietnam vet and an electrician, Bell joined the Army, then signed on for the IBEW’s five-year apprentice program in January 2002.

After 9-11, he deployed to Germany to replace security units with his Joliet-based unit, then spent time in Louisiana training soldiers preparing for deployment to Iraq, then followed them overseas in 2005.

Folks at the VA helped him redraw career plans, and paid for his classes at Moraine Valley Community College. Bell transferred to DePaul this past quarter, where he’s studying accounting.

He lives on his own now in Orland Park, near his parents and other family members, and commutes to school by train.

“My future is intact at this point,” he said. “I think it was a little rough when I first got back. The schools have been very supportive. I think I moved into it very well.”

Despite his strength in mathematics, Bell’s not a natural student. But he can push his brain now more easily than his body.

“School is my future,” he said. “I can’t really rely on my body to go out and work the labor parts of the job community.”

Veterans decry disrespect of military graves in Burr Oak
Moving vet graves to VA cemetery possible

LINK: http://www.southtownstar.com/burr-oak/1694230,073109burroakvets.article
PDF Veterans decry disrespect of Burr Oak graves __ The SouthtownStar __ Burr Oak Cemetery

July 31, 2009 

BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK Staff writer

After Jerome Randolph died in 2001 of complications from the Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam, his family laid him to rest at Burr Oak cemetery.

Some 2,000 of his military brothers and sisters, including his own brother, also have been buried there since its 1929 founding.

ut when his widow, Joyce Randolph, went to visit six months ago, she and her children couldn’t find his government-issued headstone that ID’d him as an Army vet. He wasn’t in the spot they’d gone to a year earlier.

A woman in the office she now believes is the office manager being held at the Cook County Jail told her, “Lady, he’s out there”.

“No telling where he’s at now, ain’t no telling,” Randolph said.

Should Jerome’s grave be found intact, his wife wants him moved somewhere else.

“I don’t think I would leave him,” she said. “I don’t trust Burr Oaks no more.”

Of the 200 to 300 graves believe ripped up and resold for profit, some are believed to belong to black veterans whose families chose Burr Oak because they had few choices.

Three government-issued military headstones have been found dumped onto a trash pile at the back of the cemetery, said Cook County sheriff’s spokesman Steve Patterson.

Patterson can’t yet say specifically which veterans’ graves may have been been disinterred by the four employees charged in a grave-reselling scheme because of the shoddy condition of the cemetery’s records. But investigators now have a list from the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs of the names of the veterans – some of which date back to the Spanish-American War – buried in the Alsip cemetery.

‘Those are comrades’

Robert Davis, a past president of the state’s premiere black American Legion post, Dorie Miller 915, is among those pushing to move veterans graves to Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, where their perpetual care would fall to the government. His members are livid.

“The Korean War vets are very upset. You know it’s devastating to me – it’s got to be devastating to them,” he said. “Those are the comrades they went to war with.”

Reburial costs would also fall to the government once the veteran’s body has been delivered to Abraham Lincoln’s front gates, said Mike Nacincik of the National Cemetery Administration. But families have to shoulder the cost of disinterring the veteran and having the body moved, he said. Families also have to prove the servicemember’s eligibility for military burial by locating discharge papers. Any kind of discharge but dishonorable qualifies, he said.

If families can’t locate their loved one’s remains, they still might apply for a memorial headstone at Abraham Lincoln.

“Abraham Lincoln would be a wonderful option,” said Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-Crete), whose district contains the national cemetery, and who sits on the Congressional subcommittee overseeing veterans’ burial issues.

“We’ll do everything in our power to help any family, a family not even from my district,” she said.

Usually the government only pays for one burial, but extenuating circumstances at Burr Oak could warrant an exception, she said.

“I think we have to find a fair conclusion to this,” she said. “Rest in peace means truly rest in peace.”

Consider the costs

Disinterrment costs an average of $1,900 to $3,000, said Vickie Hand, past president of the Homewood-based Illinois Cemetery and Funeral Home Association. That doesn’t include fees for the funeral director who has to oversee the process.

“It’s an expensive undertaking,” she said. “You can’t transport human remains that have been in the ground for years and years and years in a casket sometimes.”

Hand urged families to wait a little longer before shelling out any more money.

“When the dust settles, they’ll know whether or not they’ll be a problem with their loved one or not. If they find their loved one’s grave was not disturbed, they can rest assured that in the future it will be a nice cemetery.

“Roman Szabelski is a qualified man,” she said of the court-appointed receiver whose plans to reopen the cemetery will be made public after August 1.

Lauren FitzPatrick can be reached at lfitzpatrick@southtownstar.com or (708) 802-8832.

For more info

For more information about proving eligibility for burial at a national cemetery, the Veterans Affairs Administration has more information at this Web site: www.cem.va.gov/bbene/eligible.asp

You can also call Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery directly at (815) 423-9958.

Cemetery investigations strain sheriff’s department
LINK http://www.southtownstar.com/burr-oak/1690019,072909sheriff.article

PDF Cemetery investigations strain sheriff’s department __ The SouthtownStar __ Burr Oak Cemetery

July 29, 2009

BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK Staff writer

Police calls to Burr Oak give little hint about gruesome plot there

LINK http://www.southtownstar.com/burr-oak/1682696,072409alsip.article

PDF Police calls to Burr Oak give little hint about gruesome plot there __ The SouthtownStar __ Burr Oak Cemetery

July 24, 2009

BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK Staff writer

Alsip police got called to Burr Oak Cemetery an average of once a month in the last year and a half.

But their biggest worry at the site now known for an alleged grave-reselling plot seemed to be providing security for funerals of gang members at the historic black cemetery, according to a SouthtownStar public records search.

In the wake of the news that 200 to 300 bodies may have been dug up, questions have been raised about how Alsip authorities could have been unaware of the grisly scheme. Hadn’t police received any reports of missing graves, bones and other remains in piles, or other suspicious situations at the cemetery?

A quick review of calls to police in 2008 and 2009 to the Alsip cemetery revealed that the majority of calls to 4400 W. 127th Street, half a mile from the station, was to oversee gang funerals.

Three incidents during that same period stemmed from problems with the cemetery itself, according to police records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

In May 2008, Burr Oak called police because a woman who showed up for a visit couldn’t find her loved one’s grave site. She “yelled expletives and fled the scene before our arrival in an unknown red vehicle,” responding officers wrote in a report. Since she left, police couldn’t identify the woman, Radz said.

Later that month, on May 24, the cemetery called police on Edward Boone, accusing him and his one-man protest against cemetery conditions, of blocking the main gates. Then on May 26, Boone dialed 911, saying that cemetery security guards had been harassing him over the two days he was marching in protest that his mother’s grave was too shallow.

An Alsip public health inspector measured the grave’s dept from the surface and, at 15 inches instead of the required 36 inches, cited the cemetery.

An Alsip public health inspector measured the grave’s dept from the surface and, at 15 inches instead of the required 36 inches, cited the cemetery.

Boone since has won a legal battle that ordered the cemetery to move his mother’s grave.

A third call for a disturbance between cemetery officials and a mourning family turned out to be a conflict over a fee, which the funeral director paid, police chief Christopher Radz said.

Nine of the 19 calls were from funeral directors or the cemetery asking for police presence at funerals that were especially large or rowdy, according to the records.

One funeral in May 2008 already had mourners arrested at the Chicago funeral home where the man was being waked. And shots were fired at a Chicago funeral home in August 2008 before the procession left for Burr Oak.

Radz said the security was necessary because so many residential properties about the cemetery directly along 125th Street and Loveland Street.

If shots were fired or a fight broke out at the gravesite, residents could be hurt, he said. He has denied knowing anything about illegal activity at Burr Oak until May, when Burr Oak’s attorney Trudi Foushee walked in to tell police the office manager had been ripping off the company. The manager, Carolyn Towns, now is charged along with three of her co-workers.

Lauren FitzPatrick can be reached at lfitzpatrick@southtownstar.com or (708) 802-8832.

‘Sgt. Christopher Abeyta comes home’

March 27, 2009 

LINK

http://www.southtownstar.com/news/soldier_stories/1498170,032709abeyta.article
PDF Sgt. Christopher Abeyta comes home __ The SouthtownStar __ Soldiers’ stories

BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK Staff writer

Sgt. Christopher Abeyta came home to a hero’s greeting Thursday. As his flag-draped casket made its way from Midway Airport to Midlothian, the 23-year-old lost to the war in Afghanistan was surrounded by those who loved him best, by those who, like him, swore to serve America and by those who found themselves touched by his death on March 15.

When a small jet carrying the National Guard sergeant’s body touched down, Abeyta’s parents were escorted from a private room inside the National Guard building into a cavernous hangar, where some 60 Patriot Guard Riders wielding tall flags lined the walls, a few taking care to block the windows from curious onlookers and camera lenses. Midlothian’s police, firefighters and veterans from World War II through Desert Storm grouped together, still unable to fill the room’s palpable emptiness.

The plane approached the hangar; streams of water blasted over it out of Chicago fire trucks in the first of the day’s many tangible honors.

Paul Abeyta held his wife Barbara’s hand tightly as they both cried at their only child’s homecoming, Chris’ muddy face smiling out on “Our Hero” T-shirts they both wore. Jon Mireles, Chris’ best friend, the one he enlisted with while still in high school, held onto his wife, Niki, and sobbed.

No words were spoken, save orders to salute at the sight of the casket, covered in an American flag, until it had disappeared, stripes first into the back of a hearse, at the gloved hands of seven Guardsmen.

‘Hail Mary, full of grace’

An entourage of Midlothian police and fire vehicles, Abeyta’s family and dozens of Patriot Guard Riders on gleaming motorcycles rode south on Cicero Avenue, turning east at 115th Street to pass the Alsip home of Abeyta’s paternal grandmother, Elvira.

Her house stood out from the neighborhood, marked by giant flags on swiveling bases and crowds in T-shirts bearing Abeyta’s grin.

Hundreds of Marist High School students in navy and khaki awaited the procession from the school’s front lawn with tiny flags in their hands. The teenagers chatted and socialized the way young people do while they waited in the sunshine. Teachers tried to quiet the students ahead of time. Silence fell down the line at the first sight of flashing lights. Hands jumped to cover hearts.

Then, over and over, filling the long minutes it took the procession to pass, came the voices in unison: “Now and at the hour of our death, amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you …”

‘In loving memory’

Ladder trucks lent from Robbins, Homer Township and Orland Park crossed Pulaski Road, suspending flags down the center of the street, at intervals that shrank as Abeyta’s homecoming neared Midlothian. Firefighters and police from each town the procession entered stood at attention in full uniforms. Along the 14-mile route, people waited to witness the passing procession.

Bremen High School, where Abeyta graduated in 2003, was a mob scene of flags and posters: “Hero” “Thank you Chris, a true Bremen hero” “RIP Christopher.” Sixteen-year-old Lauren Boulden said her art class made one of the many banners: “In loving memory of Christopher Abeyta, the bravest of the Braves, Bremen High School honors you.”

Stuck in the resulting traffic, one man shut off his SUV, got out and saluted.

Many of Abeyta’s 15,000 neighbors wept on porches and sidewalks for a young man they’d never met. They tied yellow ribbons around trees, changed their business signs to mark his long trip home, clung to flags and gathered up their kids to bear witness. Bells at St. Christopher Church clanged and clanged.

Nicole Cardinal stood in the middle of 147th Street to watch Christopher be ushered into Hickey Memorial Chapel with incredible solemnity and ceremony. She schlepped three of her four young children out to pay their respects and tell them, “Yes, those are real soldiers.”

And she cried with her community for one of their own.

“Anyone who gives his life for our country’s freedom deserves our respect,” she said. “Midlothian … has a lot of pride in people who come from here.”

Lauren FitzPatrick can be reached at lfitzpatrick@southtownstar.com or (708) 802-8832.

A wake for Christopher Abeyta will be from 2 to 9 p.m. at Hickey Memorial Chapel, 4201 W. 147th Street. A funeral Mass will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Christopher Catholic Church, followed by burial at Lincoln National Cemetery. At about 9:15 a.m., Abeyta’s body will be walked across 147th street from the funeral home to the church.

‘She was tough’
Robinson is first Thorton grad killed in Afghanistan, Iraq

LINK: http://www.southtownstar.com/news/soldier_stories/1461779,030509robinsonfolo.article
PDF Southland Guardsman to be buried Sat. __ The SouthtownStar __ Soldiers’ stories

March 5, 2009 
BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK Staff writer

Simone Robinson was a smart, funny girl; a promising student who showed up for her freshman yearbook photo in a sparkly Army brat T-shirt, and graduated from Thornton Township High School in 2005 with excellent grades and a start date with the Illinois National Guard.

On Wednesday, word spread among her former classmates and colleagues that Robinson had died from the burns she suffered during a January attack in Afghanistan. It was her first deployment.

Amanda Manson, a friend since the days the girls attended eighth grade at Rosa Parks Elementary School in Harvey, said Robinson was “real sweet, and she was funny, too.”

“She kept me laughing and others around her,” Manson said. “She would help you when you came to her if you had problems with your work. I don’t think she ever got bad grades.

“It ran in the family (because) her sister was smart, too,” Manson said of Simone’s sister and best friend, Sharmonique Robinson.

Sharmonique’s Facebook page was covered with condolence messages Wednesday from friends who changed their profile pictures to images of Simone.

Robinson, a 21-year-old single mother of baby Nyzia, was Thornton’s first alum to be killed in the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, Principal Betheny Lyke said.

“We definitely are in mourning as a school,” Lyke said. She described Robinson as an excellent student whose death shook up her former teachers. Lyke said the school’s flag was flying at half staff and further plans to mourn Robinson or celebrate her life would depend on her family’s wishes.

Her parents released a written statement Thursday through the National Guard:

“Nothing compares to what our family is experiencing at this time, with the loss of Simone. She was devoted to her friends, her family, her country and most importantly to her daughter, Nyzia.

“She wanted nothing more than to be a good role model for Nyzia and was dedicated to working hard to provide for her. Simone had a smile that could easily light up a room and an angelic voice heard by so many.  Simone sang her way through life, getting her through so much. She is truly our hero and will always be in our hearts. We thank you for your support at this difficult time and ask media to respect our wishes not to be interviewed.”

The Guard also announced Robinson was posthumously promoted to the rank of sergeant and awarded a Bronze Star medal. After the attack,while in the hospital, she also received a Purple Heart, Sgt. April Haas said. 

Her other awards include a Combat Action Badge, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Armed Forces Reserve Medal with M-device, Army Service Ribbon and NATO Medal.

A guardsman from her unit has flown to Texas to escort her body home. According to military tradition, Robinson’s commander First Lt. Beth Roxworthy said, the body of a fallen soldier is not left alone until burial with full military honors, but all funeral details are up to the family. 

Funeral services are set for Saturday at Great Hope Church in Robbins, said Roxworthy.

Robinson herself used to preside over veterans’ funerals as part of a National Guard detail, Roxworthy said. Based at the Crestwood Armory, she deployed in August with Company E, 634th Brigade Support Battalion based in Joliet to Afghanistan as part of the 33rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team to provide force protection for Camp Eggers and to be the quick reaction force for the Kabul area, officials said.

Her former colleague Anthony Caples often was her partner during a two-man flag fold ceremony. And sometimes she’d fire a rifle as part of a 21-gun salute.

“She was a young rookie, she was quiet, laid back, always had a smile,” he said. “She had a positive attitude. She was tough.”

Her movements were “crisp,” as she helped lay soldiers to rest, including a few killed in Iraq, the 47-year-old said. “I only went with the best ones.”

Now Robinson, who returns to Illinois escorted by a member of her Crestwood unit, will be buried with military honors, he said.

She was wounded during a Jan. 17 attack outside a U.S. military base in Kabul. The attack immediately killed another U.S. service member and four Afghan civilians and wounded eighteen other troops.

Badly burned during the explosion, Robinson initially was taken to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for treatment and later was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. One of her legs had to be amputated.

On Sunday she died, surrounded by her parents and sister who stayed by her bedside the past few weeks.

Longtime neighbor Victor Willis said he got the call Sunday night that Robinson had died. He had just received a flyer announcing the creation of a trust fund to care for her and her 2-year-old daughter. The flyer featured photos of the baby girl and of Robinson in full uniform, and urging friends to to help support her.

“She was still fighting and stuff,” he said. Willis used to play next door around the little ranch home in Robbins owned by Robinson’s grandparents – a house which on Wednesday was silent.

Then one day, the young woman everyone described as tiny, little or petite showed up in her military togs, catching Willis off guard.

“I didn’t think she was old enough to be in the service,” he said.

Lauren FitzPatrick can be reached at lfitzpatrick@southtownstar.com or (708) 802-8832.

Jobless claims largest in 26 years

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 7:38 AM CST, December 11, 2008

So call the press folks if you still have questions. It is, after all, why they get paid. And tell me what you think about the much-touted site.

Contact Name: Jennifer Coxe or Otto Heck
Phone Number: (202) 693-4676
Release Number: 08-1540-NAT

U.S. Labor Department economic resources on-line for workers
www.EconomicRecovery.gov is gateway for information and assistance

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor announced its participation in a one-stop Web tool offering a number of resources to assist those negatively impacted by the recent turmoil in the worldwide economy.

“We want to make information easily accessible and quickly available to American workers affected by the economic downturn,” said Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao. “The new www.EconomicRecovery.gov one-stop Web page gives workers easy access to Department of Labor resources including unemployment insurance, local job openings and retirement security information as well as help available at other government agencies.”

Affected workers and employers are encouraged to visit the federal government’s Economic Recovery Web site at http://www.EconomicRecovery.gov. Useful information and links will assist Americans with questions about benefits, eligibility, locations of operating One-Stop Career Centers and career service centers, unemployment insurance information by state, and available assistance from other government departments and agencies.

Workers can call the department’s toll-free number at 866-4-USA-DOL (487-2365) to obtain the latest information on where to file a claim and access temporary job information. Impacted workers can place their calls from anywhere and will be directed to sites near them that can take their claims.