Brian Higgins had always felt a calling to military service. His family had a long history of service, but the timing wasn’t right when he was younger. So when the U.S. Army Reserve raised the maximum enlistment age in 2005, he told his wife, Renee, that he wanted to join.
It wasn’t the first time Brian had brought it up. When their five children were younger, it just wasn’t something she thought they could handle. But his desire to serve remained strong, and Renee knew how much it meant to him.
“It was one of those things he felt like he really needed to do,” Renee Higgins says. “So I said OK.
“I think some people are called to be surgeons or lawyers, and some are called to be servants and soldiers. It’s a calling that obviously comes with great sacrifice to us and to him.”
The Higgins family learned just how much they would have to sacrifice about a year and a half ago. Brian’s unit, the 103rd ESC (expeditionary sustainment command) out of Des Moines, Iowa, got orders to deploy to Iraq. He would train for four months in the states before heading overseas.
No matter how well Renee understood that this day could come, nothing can prepare a military spouse when the possibility of deployment becomes reality. Renee says she reeled through shock, fear, worry and panic when Brian got his orders. But then, she knew it was up to her to steer her family through the difficult months ahead.
Brian would be taking leave from his job as a materials logistics agent for Bombardier Learjet. Renee, who is the Internet sales manager for the Davis-Moore car dealership group, would be working full-time and taking care of the family on her own.
“When they first leave, it’s pure torture. But you have to keep going. The kids need the stability,” she says.
Although Renee would be shouldering family life solo, she’s far from alone as a military spouse. Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than two million troops have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Unprecedented numbers of reservists and National Guard members have been called up, which leaves more American families dealing with lengthy deployments for the first time.
According to “Strengthening Our Military Families,” a report released by the White House in January, more than half of the force—55 percent—is married, and 40 percent have two children. There are approximately 400,000 spouses of reserve members, and currently about 220,000 children have a parent deployed in all branches combined.
All five Higgins children still live at home. Their oldest daughter graduated from high school last year, while Dad was overseas, and now attends Wichita State University. Another daughter is 14, and their sons are 16, 15, and 9. Renee was the only driver, so with all their activities, “sometimes I literally had to be three places at once.”
The giant, color-coded family calendar that always kept them on schedule was now indispensible. So was the small home-front army of friends and family. They cooked meals, carpooled and babysat. Their support was key to keeping the family afloat, but Renee says it meant just as much when people would simply reach out to ask about Brian, or her and the kids. One Facebook comment or phone call at a time, they kept her spirits up.
The kids began taking care of one another and their home without even thinking about it, Renee says. The older boys took over chores like mowing the lawn and changing furnace filters.
They all rallied around their 9-year-old baby brother, getting him to basketball practice and helping with Boy Scouts. “It’s been hardest on the youngest. He idolizes the ground Daddy walks on,” Renee says. “That’s where the older siblings deserve kudos. That maturing and nurturing innately takes place when one of the parents is called away.”
Personally, Renee says, faith in God kept her hope alive and her fear contained. “Prayer will take you very, very far on days you don’t think you have an ounce of strength left,” she says, and that includes the many prayers of friends and family.
“You have to be strong for your children. Their lives are already rocked by one parent being gone. You want to instill security in them. So if you do have those moments of weakness, you certainly don’t show it to them.”
They coped by watching the TV show “Army Wives” together, and sending care packages to other soldiers they didn’t even know. About twice a month the family could visit on a Skype video call. Phone calls and emails were more frequent.
Brian served as an aide to the chief of staff where he was stationed in Balad, Iraq. His job was largely administrative—organizing meetings and events, and helping about 5,000 other soldiers schedule things like R&R in the camp they called “Mortaritaville.”
It seemed like a safe enough assignment, but SPC Brian Higgins still carried a gun. And then there were the missions.
Renee wouldn’t always know when Brian’s unit was sent on a mission, until days would go by without an email. Then weeks—agonizingly slow weeks, as the family waited for Brian to surface and make contact again. Fortunately, he always did.
He even got to come home for two weeks at Christmas. After Renee picked him up from the airport, they headed to the younger kids’ school. In the office, the kids saw their mom, and wondered if they were in trouble. She told them she had good news, that Dad was headed home early—and then he walked right up behind them and said “I’m here.” The kids went berserk.
The long separation has taught the family to treasure their mundane moments just as much as the early Christmas gift of Dad coming home, Renee says. She thinks often of other families who aren’t blessed with the support system she’s had.
The military tries to fill the gap with services like the Army Reserve Family Program, which has a lot of online and real-life resources on staying connected during deployment, helping children cope with the separation and fear, and the stress that accompanies the joy when a solider returns.
In mid-April, Renee got the call she had been waiting 15 months for: Brian was coming home. Redeployment back to the states happens in stages, but just finding out that he was on the way was a giant relief, she says.
“When I got the text that he was in Wisconsin, it was like,”—she sighs—“he’s out of Iraq, he’s out of the war zone, he’s home. It felt like I shed a thousand pounds at that moment.”
Brian doesn’t like when people make a fuss over his service, Renee says—he’s just doing his job. But he probably knew better than to expect a low-key welcome back. “Brian doesn’t like a lot of rigamarole, but there was some rigamarole at the airport when he came home!”
~ERIN PERRY O’DONNELL
Coping With Deployment
Kids need tangible ways to mark time when a parent is gone. Here are some ideas from MilSpouse.com, the website of Military Spouse Magazine:
• Make a paper chain with a link for each day of the deployment. Each day the child tears off a link and is one day closer to his parent’s return.
• Fill a jar with a candy kiss for each day. The child then gets a “kiss” each day from her deployed parent.
• Have kids make a calendar with the deploying parent ahead of time, with photos of them together and special days marked.
• Older children can keep a blog of their daily thoughts and activities, and the deployed parent can read and comment while he or she is away.
• Send a digital picture frame with the deploying parent, and you can regularly upload new photos to it or mail a flash drive with pictures. Keep one at home, too, for photos from the parent who is away.
• For children whose parent is on the move, such as on a Navy ship, get a world map and use push pins to show where he or she has traveled.
Other tips:
• Keep your child in touch with other military children who can relate to their feelings.
• Take advantage of every free service, camp, school, and program offered to military children—there are a lot.
• Keep the deployed parent a presence as much as possible.
Military Family Resources:
Just last month, the White House launched the Joining Forces initiative, designed to give service members and their families the opportunities and support they have earned. Find out more at www.whitehouse.gov/joiningforces.
A guide to family support programs for all branches of the military is at fhp.osd.mil/deploymentTips.jsp
Hooah 4 Health, a wellness program specifically for reservists and their families: www.hooah4health.com
Remember Memorial Day
In its 2002 Memorial Day address, the VFW urged Americans to return to the original observance of this holiday, which is to honor those who have fallen in service to their country. “Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.” What will you do this year to remember service members who have died?
