In Time of War, a Helping Hand
Group Aids Kids of Deployed National Guard and Reserve Parents

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 1, 2007

CLEVELAND -- When her father went off to war, 13-year-old Brittney Wilkinson felt angry. She cried at unexpected times and battled her older sister, Ashley. At school, she seemed withdrawn. When her mother saw an offer that would pay for art classes for both girls, she jumped at it.

"Any distraction that I can find, helps," Natalie Wilkinson said.

Brittney explored computer-assisted art and turned a corner. She learned how to "make things look like they're coming out of the page." Her teacher told her she had a gift. She focused on designing a logo -- a caduceus (two serpents entwined around a winged staff) topped by an eagle -- for her father's 285th Aerial Support Medical Company headquarters in Iraq.

By the tens of thousands, children such as Brittney are learning firsthand what it is like to have a parent at war, and their parents are witnessing the stress that often emerges from the abrupt absence, the sense of danger, the interruption of routines.

"There's stress that goes along with not knowing if your parent is going to be okay. Hearing or seeing very graphic things. Hearing about mass casualties," said Judith A. Cohen, a Pittsburgh child psychiatrist.

To meet the need of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which have meant the deployment of more than 1 million Americans since 2001, nonprofit groups are sprouting from seeds of good intentions. One is Our Military Kids, which provides grants for activities to children such as the Wilkinsons.

Started in McLean in 2005, the organization has delivered more than $600,000 to the children of deployed National Guard and reserves parents in chunks no greater than $500. Payments have reached children in all 50 states, the District and Puerto Rico.

In Ohio alone, grants have paid for lessons in swimming, dance, cheerleading, martial arts, piano, football, acting, bowling, softball and driver's education. The money may not stretch far, but children, parents and National Guard officers say the cash often makes a critical difference at a time when many kids feel needy.

"It just works," said Lt. Col. Robert Bramlish, director of the Ohio National Guard's family readiness program. "Extracurriculars are important, no matter what they are. A lot of times, what the kids need is just some outside camaraderie time."

One supporter is Angie Dixon, a mail carrier whose husband will have been gone 15 months when he returns from Kuwait this month. After the deployment began, 13-year-old Riley Dixon "was just a really angry kid. He couldn't concentrate on school. He was getting in a lot of fights at school because kids were picking on him. I was at wit's end."

Dixon was considering quitting work and home-schooling her son in Marietta, Ohio. With $500 from Our Military Kids, she paid for testing and a month of tutoring. Something clicked. Riley settled down, and his grades went up. He made the honor roll.

"We have been able to see what a difference these relatively small grants can make," said Linda Davidson, the program's co-executive director who spent 19 years at IBM before joining Gail Chipman Kruzel to start Our Military Kids. The two women met through their children at Langley High and later combined on a project that saw them interviewing National Guard spouses.

For Davidson, who comes from a non-military family, the spark came from a North Carolina mother whose husband was deployed overseas with the National Guard. Unable to manage his two businesses while home-schooling a special-needs son, she was getting a second mortgage to put her son in school and pay for her daughter's cheerleading training.

"That haunted me," said Davidson, 54, who said she had little considered the impact of deployments on families. "That got us to thinking there's got to be some way."

As Kruzel, 53, said, "We just thought, 'This isn't right.' "

Kruzel's professional background is in health-care policy and management. Her husband, Joseph J. Kruzel, was a Defense Department negotiator killed on a mission to war-battered Bosnia in 1995. As she and Davidson built the organization, they assembled an advisory board of notables, many with Pentagon connections. They have relied on word of mouth for donations and grant applications.

A pair of young boys sent their allowance. A Phoenix teenager sent her babysitting profits. A New Jersey group sent more than $600 from the sale of butterscotch brownies. A former secretary of defense gave $10,000. A prominent law firm that once had offices in the World Trade Center gave $50,000, noting that military children, too, were affected by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The biggest donor has been General Dynamics, the defense contractor, which has contributed $225,000. When Target gave $20,000, the company headquarters asked that it go to children interested in fine arts. After the money was exhausted, the group gave Target a list of the recipients. This year, the store increased its donation to $50,000.

"Our ambitions are that we have a major infusion of funding so we can start outreach," Davidson said. "We know there are a lot more children out there we could be assisting if we had the funding and we could make more families aware."

A wall of honor in the group's McLean headquarters offers evidence of their impact and the good vibrations that the grants have generated. Five bulletin boards are covered with photos -- children at their activities; fathers at war; children with their parents at home on leave.

Army National Guard Capt. Scott Soucy's photo is on the wall. He is shown with his 10-year-old son Anthony seated on his knee, their arms around each other. They are smiling. Soucy, attached to Delaware's 198th Signal Battalion, mobilized in July 2006 and is now stationed in Baghdad.

When he left home, Anthony went into a tailspin.

"He started having problems in school. It really looked as though he was going to be a real problem kid," Soucy said, explaining that Anthony typically needs extra time and explanations to absorb school lessons, an assist his father gave before he deployed.

A grant from Our Military Kids paid one of Anthony's teachers to be a tutor. Soucy said the transformation was speedy and remarkable. Anthony's grades and confidence rose dramatically, a change Soucy could hear over the telephone from Middletown, Del., to Baghdad. Anthony made the honor roll.

Soucy credits the grant and Anthony's determination with turning things around. He said the program helped Anthony and eased the mind of his warrior father: "I could do other things, focus on the troops and Iraq, rather than worry about my son."

In Grand Rapids, Ohio, Sandy Stasiak told her deployed husband, Will, a member of the 148th Infantry Regiment, "You're losing ground here at home."

The call was prompted by an exchange with their 12-year-old daughter, Anya.

Mom: "Has Will called? Has anyone heard from Dad?"

Anya: "I don't have a Dad."

Stasiak said the family, including two older children, tended to rely on themselves. When Anya wanted to take a modeling class with the thought of learning about fashion design, Stasiak's mother-in-law passed along an application for Our Military Kids funds. It took a second nudge, but Stasiak applied and received a grant.

It helped, Anya said, during a visit to their home in rural eastern Ohio. "It was something I wanted to do. Get out of my shell."