Mandy Simons never used to watch the television news much.
Jason Rearick / The Citizen
Cato residents Mandy and Gordy Simons are parents of John Simons, who served with the Marines in Iraq during the initial invasion. The couple relentlessly watched television news while their son was overseas. John is now back from his tour of duty and is working at Plainville Farms.
Cato residents Mandy and Gordy Simons are parents of John Simons, who served with the Marines in Iraq during the initial invasion. The couple relentlessly watched television news while their son was overseas. John is now back from his tour of duty and is working at Plainville Farms.
It seemed to Simons and her husband, Gordon, that there wasn't much encouraging on, so there was little point in watching it.
But when their son, John, was shipped off to Iraq two years ago, MSNBC became a fixture in their household. Simons turned up the volume so she could hear the television in every room and scanned the images for a glimpse of her son. She was searching for anything to let her know John was safe and alive.
Once, Simons swore she saw her son, then 22, flash across her screen. The television dispatch was reporting from the region where her son was stationed and it made sense to her that it was John.
She called the television station that broadcast the report and spent $60 to have the clip sent to her so she would at least have some physical proof that her son was OK. You can't exactly see John's face on the tape, but it was enough to get Simons through the hard times.
Simons and her husband, a Vietnam veteran, are among the countless parents in central New York who have watched their sons and daughters deployed to Iraq since the war began more than two years ago.
For parents who protected their children and nurtured them and watched them grow up to be responsible adults, the feeling of helplessness is often overwhelming. There is nothing to do but wait and watch and maintain contact through care packages, e-mail and the occasional phone call.
In recent weeks, with the swell of emotion growing around Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed while serving in Iraq, parents of soldiers have been forced to face and defend their own stances on the war. Not all of them agree, but they all have one thing in common: love for their children and pride in their service.
More than a whim
John Simons knew he wanted to be a Marine. His mother, Mandy, wasn't as enthusiastic about the idea.
But once John heard about Marine life from a cousin who was in the service, nothing could dissuade him from that path. Becoming a Marine was all he talked about.
Before he even graduated from high school, John had enlisted through the delayed entry program. Simons told her son that she didn't want him to go, that she was afraid for him. But he had his mind set.
A week after graduating from Cato-Meridian High School, John packed his stuff and headed to Camp Lejeune, the storied Marine base in North Carolina. There, John learned how to operate and repair weapons for the Marines and took a job as an armorer.
Over Christmas in 2002, Simons asked her son if he thought he was going to get holiday leave for next Christmas. The conversation took a solemn turn when he responded.
"He said 'Mom, I probably won't be around for next Christmas.' From then on, it made me nervous," Simons said.
Shortly after New Year's 2003, John was deployed to Iraq with the 2nd Marine Division. In those early days, Simons was often out of contact with her son.
During his tour in Iraq, John e-mailed his wife Cindy often and called his parents when he could. Simons and her husband figured as long as John wrote to somebody, that was enough for them.
"I just kind of developed the feeling that no news is good news," Simons said. "As long as no one was knocking on our door, we were fine."
For the eight months that John served in Iraq, Simons, a bus driver for the Weedsport School District, was on edge. She scoured news reports for word of her son's unit and waited for some confirmation that he was all right.
John told his mother not to worry, that he wouldn't be on the front line because he was just testing and repairing weapons. But she knew he was lying to allay her fears.
"I was very scared and nervous. It was kind of like you just wanted to stick your head in the sand and hope and pray," she said.
Despite all of the anxiety and fretting that followed Simons for those eight months, she truly believes in the necessity of her son's duty, even now after he's been out of the Marines for a little more than a year. She supports the president and the mission and believes the United States' presence in Iraq is necessary.
"You don't want your kids to go over, but somebody's got to go over there," Simons said. "I don't like war, but the president didn't take us in on a whim."
John has resumed his regular civilian life, living in Meridian with his wife and working as a turkey grower at Plainville Farms. Simons said it took a while for her son's nightmares to subside, and there are still things he doesn't want to talk about.
Though her son is safely back home, Simons knows that there are many soldiers, sons and daughters of her friends and acquaintances, who are not yet out of harm's way. For them, she continues to watch the television reports, knowing she is lucky to have her son home.
"The war's still going on," she said, "and I still worry about the families I know."
Winners and losers
Jim Meyer is not known for being a slouch at work.
But during the 11 months that his daughter, Rebecca, a captain in the Washington state National Guard, served in Iraq, it was not uncommon for Meyer to leave his shop in the middle of the day.
He would turn off all the lights, flip the "Open" sign to "Closed" and make his way home where he could deal with his anxiety and fear privately. His shuttered shop became a symbol of Meyer's inner tumult and his backlog of work now a constant reminder of those dark days.
Twenty-eight year-old Becky served as an enlisted soldier in the first Gulf War and has been in the reserves ever since, first in New York, then in Washington state. In the years since her first tour, Becky received a college education and became an officer with the guard. The military has been good to her, but Meyer would give anything for his daughter to be through with it.
Meyer, a Vietnam veteran, is outspoken in his disapproval of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq. He can hardly speak of his daughter's service without condemning the war and its initiators. But still, during Becky's time in Iraq, Meyer and his wife Bonnie, experienced the same emotions as every other military parent.
During wars of the past, families rarely, if at all spoke with their loved ones serving abroad. Many would wait for the odd letter and pray that all was well. No news was good news.
Now, in the era of instant communication, it's possible to get an updated account of war-time events. Families don't need to wait months, even years before hearing from their loved ones. They can communicate every day.
But this instant communication has at times been more of a bane than a boon for Meyer. He would hear television reports of seven soldiers killed in Balad or nine soldiers killed in Fallujah and know that Becky's unit was stationed in those cities. He would have to wait for her to call or e-mail, and the waiting was what paralyzed him the most. It was on those days that patrons of Meyer's Bookbinding would often find the shop closed.
"During that time, my wife would look right at me and know something was wrong," Meyer said. "I would turn on my computer and wait for a message."
When Becky's unit sustained casualties - nine total - all e-mail and phone access would be suspended until the soldier's next of kin was notified. That left Meyer and his wife under constant stress until they were able to get in touch with Becky. In those blackout hours and even days, Meyer began to wonder about the green car pulling up in the driveway, the prophetic symbol of a combat death.
"We both had visions of the car pulling up in the driveway. You won't get a call. An officer will just come to your door," Meyer said. "My wife said she wouldn't answer the door if that car came to our house."
Meyer and his wife turned to a support group sponsored by Becky's unit when they struggled with their emotions. And to keep themselves busy, they sent Becky care packages full of essentials, such as coffee, that Meyer said the soldiers were craving.
When Becky finally returned home in May, Meyer felt a great burden had been lifted. He could go back to work and be productive. While he counts himself lucky that his daughter returned unscathed, he still fumes for the other parents whose children are in harm's way.
"In war, there are winners and losers. But one thing's for certain - the military families are always the losers," he said. "This war will stop when American families have had enough."
Moving on
When Sheila Donovan's 2-year-old granddaughter, Emma, asked where her father was, Donovan told the girl that her daddy was at work.
That wasn't a lie - Matt Stark was, until just last week, serving in Iraq with the Troop E 101st Cavalry of the New York Army National Guard. But it is not the entire truth.
Emma is too young to understand the ideas of war and peace and obviously has no concept of Iraq. So until she does, she will just have to believe that her father was at work for the nearly nine months that she didn't see him.
Donovan soothed the diapered toddler with ash-white hair when she became cranky and wanted her father. It was just one of Donovan's many tasks while her son was away.
Stark, 29, who recently received the rank of staff sergeant, was a professional soldier for six years, serving at Fort Riley, Kan., and Fort Drum in Watertown. He is now a sheriff's deputy with the Onondaga County Sheriff's Department, but he remained a reservist after his discharge.
Donovan has had years to get used to the role of a military parent, but Iraq tested even her steady resolve.
Before Stark shipped out a year ago, Donovan joked with her son that she could break his thumbs and then he wouldn't have to go. Though she meant it in jest, her offer spoke to her deepest fears and concerns. But as a mother she knew she has to "support his decision."
"He's got a job to do, and he wouldn't try to get out of it," she said.
During Stark's deployment, his son A.J. was born on Christmas Day. Since her son wasn't around, Donovan, of Auburn, helped her daughter-in-law, Sara, pick up the slack. When she wasn't pulling 12-hour nursing shifts at Auburn Memorial Hospital, she was giving Sara, who lives in Weedsport, a much-needed respite.
Donovan isn't one to wallow and when Stark shipped off to Iraq, there was nothing she could do but get on with her regular life. She had to be strong for Sara and for her grandchildren.
"I didn't dwell on it," Donovan said about her son's deployment. "But I would actively avoid the news."
For Donovan, watching the news just reminded her that her son was thousands of miles from home. So she chose to get her news straight from her son, which of course was sanitized for her protection.
"He told us the good news, which was nice because it's stuff people didn't hear about. It tells you why we're there," she said.
While Donovan looked forward to hearing her son's voice, it was also one of the hardest parts of his absence. She could hear the exhaustion in her son's voice from working 12-hour days at a thankless, dangerous job, and she knew she couldn't do anything to help him.
But she had faith in his years of training and she was "secure in his skills." That faith didn't make all the bad days go away - Donovan, who is soft-spoken and somewhat reserved, admits of having one or two difficult days during Stark's many months away, but she willed herself past her emotions.
"I just had to get past it. You have to realize you can't do anything about it," Donovan said.
Donovan isn't interested in the politics of her son's service as much as the fact that he's home. But she's proud of his work in Iraq and believes in the war effort. Though she didn't like to see her son go, she felt in her heart it had to be done.
"If we're not fighting it there," she said, "we're fighting it here."
But when their son, John, was shipped off to Iraq two years ago, MSNBC became a fixture in their household. Simons turned up the volume so she could hear the television in every room and scanned the images for a glimpse of her son. She was searching for anything to let her know John was safe and alive.
Once, Simons swore she saw her son, then 22, flash across her screen. The television dispatch was reporting from the region where her son was stationed and it made sense to her that it was John.
She called the television station that broadcast the report and spent $60 to have the clip sent to her so she would at least have some physical proof that her son was OK. You can't exactly see John's face on the tape, but it was enough to get Simons through the hard times.
Simons and her husband, a Vietnam veteran, are among the countless parents in central New York who have watched their sons and daughters deployed to Iraq since the war began more than two years ago.
For parents who protected their children and nurtured them and watched them grow up to be responsible adults, the feeling of helplessness is often overwhelming. There is nothing to do but wait and watch and maintain contact through care packages, e-mail and the occasional phone call.
In recent weeks, with the swell of emotion growing around Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed while serving in Iraq, parents of soldiers have been forced to face and defend their own stances on the war. Not all of them agree, but they all have one thing in common: love for their children and pride in their service.
More than a whim
John Simons knew he wanted to be a Marine. His mother, Mandy, wasn't as enthusiastic about the idea.
But once John heard about Marine life from a cousin who was in the service, nothing could dissuade him from that path. Becoming a Marine was all he talked about.
Before he even graduated from high school, John had enlisted through the delayed entry program. Simons told her son that she didn't want him to go, that she was afraid for him. But he had his mind set.
A week after graduating from Cato-Meridian High School, John packed his stuff and headed to Camp Lejeune, the storied Marine base in North Carolina. There, John learned how to operate and repair weapons for the Marines and took a job as an armorer.
Over Christmas in 2002, Simons asked her son if he thought he was going to get holiday leave for next Christmas. The conversation took a solemn turn when he responded.
"He said 'Mom, I probably won't be around for next Christmas.' From then on, it made me nervous," Simons said.
Shortly after New Year's 2003, John was deployed to Iraq with the 2nd Marine Division. In those early days, Simons was often out of contact with her son.
During his tour in Iraq, John e-mailed his wife Cindy often and called his parents when he could. Simons and her husband figured as long as John wrote to somebody, that was enough for them.
"I just kind of developed the feeling that no news is good news," Simons said. "As long as no one was knocking on our door, we were fine."
For the eight months that John served in Iraq, Simons, a bus driver for the Weedsport School District, was on edge. She scoured news reports for word of her son's unit and waited for some confirmation that he was all right.
John told his mother not to worry, that he wouldn't be on the front line because he was just testing and repairing weapons. But she knew he was lying to allay her fears.
"I was very scared and nervous. It was kind of like you just wanted to stick your head in the sand and hope and pray," she said.
Despite all of the anxiety and fretting that followed Simons for those eight months, she truly believes in the necessity of her son's duty, even now after he's been out of the Marines for a little more than a year. She supports the president and the mission and believes the United States' presence in Iraq is necessary.
"You don't want your kids to go over, but somebody's got to go over there," Simons said. "I don't like war, but the president didn't take us in on a whim."
John has resumed his regular civilian life, living in Meridian with his wife and working as a turkey grower at Plainville Farms. Simons said it took a while for her son's nightmares to subside, and there are still things he doesn't want to talk about.
Though her son is safely back home, Simons knows that there are many soldiers, sons and daughters of her friends and acquaintances, who are not yet out of harm's way. For them, she continues to watch the television reports, knowing she is lucky to have her son home.
"The war's still going on," she said, "and I still worry about the families I know."
Winners and losers
Jim Meyer is not known for being a slouch at work.
But during the 11 months that his daughter, Rebecca, a captain in the Washington state National Guard, served in Iraq, it was not uncommon for Meyer to leave his shop in the middle of the day.
He would turn off all the lights, flip the "Open" sign to "Closed" and make his way home where he could deal with his anxiety and fear privately. His shuttered shop became a symbol of Meyer's inner tumult and his backlog of work now a constant reminder of those dark days.
Twenty-eight year-old Becky served as an enlisted soldier in the first Gulf War and has been in the reserves ever since, first in New York, then in Washington state. In the years since her first tour, Becky received a college education and became an officer with the guard. The military has been good to her, but Meyer would give anything for his daughter to be through with it.
Meyer, a Vietnam veteran, is outspoken in his disapproval of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq. He can hardly speak of his daughter's service without condemning the war and its initiators. But still, during Becky's time in Iraq, Meyer and his wife Bonnie, experienced the same emotions as every other military parent.
During wars of the past, families rarely, if at all spoke with their loved ones serving abroad. Many would wait for the odd letter and pray that all was well. No news was good news.
Now, in the era of instant communication, it's possible to get an updated account of war-time events. Families don't need to wait months, even years before hearing from their loved ones. They can communicate every day.
But this instant communication has at times been more of a bane than a boon for Meyer. He would hear television reports of seven soldiers killed in Balad or nine soldiers killed in Fallujah and know that Becky's unit was stationed in those cities. He would have to wait for her to call or e-mail, and the waiting was what paralyzed him the most. It was on those days that patrons of Meyer's Bookbinding would often find the shop closed.
"During that time, my wife would look right at me and know something was wrong," Meyer said. "I would turn on my computer and wait for a message."
When Becky's unit sustained casualties - nine total - all e-mail and phone access would be suspended until the soldier's next of kin was notified. That left Meyer and his wife under constant stress until they were able to get in touch with Becky. In those blackout hours and even days, Meyer began to wonder about the green car pulling up in the driveway, the prophetic symbol of a combat death.
"We both had visions of the car pulling up in the driveway. You won't get a call. An officer will just come to your door," Meyer said. "My wife said she wouldn't answer the door if that car came to our house."
Meyer and his wife turned to a support group sponsored by Becky's unit when they struggled with their emotions. And to keep themselves busy, they sent Becky care packages full of essentials, such as coffee, that Meyer said the soldiers were craving.
When Becky finally returned home in May, Meyer felt a great burden had been lifted. He could go back to work and be productive. While he counts himself lucky that his daughter returned unscathed, he still fumes for the other parents whose children are in harm's way.
"In war, there are winners and losers. But one thing's for certain - the military families are always the losers," he said. "This war will stop when American families have had enough."
Moving on
When Sheila Donovan's 2-year-old granddaughter, Emma, asked where her father was, Donovan told the girl that her daddy was at work.
That wasn't a lie - Matt Stark was, until just last week, serving in Iraq with the Troop E 101st Cavalry of the New York Army National Guard. But it is not the entire truth.
Emma is too young to understand the ideas of war and peace and obviously has no concept of Iraq. So until she does, she will just have to believe that her father was at work for the nearly nine months that she didn't see him.
Donovan soothed the diapered toddler with ash-white hair when she became cranky and wanted her father. It was just one of Donovan's many tasks while her son was away.
Stark, 29, who recently received the rank of staff sergeant, was a professional soldier for six years, serving at Fort Riley, Kan., and Fort Drum in Watertown. He is now a sheriff's deputy with the Onondaga County Sheriff's Department, but he remained a reservist after his discharge.
Donovan has had years to get used to the role of a military parent, but Iraq tested even her steady resolve.
Before Stark shipped out a year ago, Donovan joked with her son that she could break his thumbs and then he wouldn't have to go. Though she meant it in jest, her offer spoke to her deepest fears and concerns. But as a mother she knew she has to "support his decision."
"He's got a job to do, and he wouldn't try to get out of it," she said.
During Stark's deployment, his son A.J. was born on Christmas Day. Since her son wasn't around, Donovan, of Auburn, helped her daughter-in-law, Sara, pick up the slack. When she wasn't pulling 12-hour nursing shifts at Auburn Memorial Hospital, she was giving Sara, who lives in Weedsport, a much-needed respite.
Donovan isn't one to wallow and when Stark shipped off to Iraq, there was nothing she could do but get on with her regular life. She had to be strong for Sara and for her grandchildren.
"I didn't dwell on it," Donovan said about her son's deployment. "But I would actively avoid the news."
For Donovan, watching the news just reminded her that her son was thousands of miles from home. So she chose to get her news straight from her son, which of course was sanitized for her protection.
"He told us the good news, which was nice because it's stuff people didn't hear about. It tells you why we're there," she said.
While Donovan looked forward to hearing her son's voice, it was also one of the hardest parts of his absence. She could hear the exhaustion in her son's voice from working 12-hour days at a thankless, dangerous job, and she knew she couldn't do anything to help him.
But she had faith in his years of training and she was "secure in his skills." That faith didn't make all the bad days go away - Donovan, who is soft-spoken and somewhat reserved, admits of having one or two difficult days during Stark's many months away, but she willed herself past her emotions.
"I just had to get past it. You have to realize you can't do anything about it," Donovan said.
Donovan isn't interested in the politics of her son's service as much as the fact that he's home. But she's proud of his work in Iraq and believes in the war effort. Though she didn't like to see her son go, she felt in her heart it had to be done.
"If we're not fighting it there," she said, "we're fighting it here."
