Heartbreak High

Killeen Shoemaker, in the shadow of Fort Hood, is ground zero for the home front, a school where hundreds of students have parents who are deployed in Iraq and fear of death and danger is part of everyday life.

by Mimi Swartz

March 2006

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Of course she doesn’t. It isn’t long before a weary, middle-aged woman with a sixties-era bouffant joins us to talk about her son’s declining grades in one particular class, her glowing daughter in tow. The youth of the girl accentuates her mother’s age; the daughter is slim, with long sable-colored hair, stylish hoop earrings, and the classic teenage expression of exasperation, while her mother is tense and pale. Unaware of what has gone before, they join the conversation about military life. Her husband, an officer, left for Iraq right after Thanksgiving, and as an officer’s wife, she is spending all her time helping Family Readiness Groups, going to holiday teas, and soothing young wives whose husbands will be overseas for Christmas. The daughter sighs heavily, and the mother tries to explain why she has neglected to get her own family’s Christmas decorations up yet. “If you were seventeen and alone, I would want someone to help you,” she says. Such stress is common at Fort Hood: Even military parents who aren’t deployed are working harder and seeing their families less than before. The downsized volunteer army now resembles the corporate world, with one person often doing a job previously performed by two.

As for her daughter, the multiple moves—three in three years—have caused the usual teenage stresses. “I have to try out for cheerleader every year again,” she says.

“Where’s your mother now?” the woman asks Rohan.

“She died,” he says evenly. Both mother and daughter look as though they’ve been kicked. “I’m sorry,” they say softly, in unison.

The woman’s own son, it seems, has not told his teachers about his father’s deployment or his mother about his slipping grades; she’d had to find out from a teacher. Soon the teacher appears in the office to recite a litany of complaints: rudeness, inattentiveness, failure to do homework or attend tutoring sessions that might bring up his grades. Told of the deployment, the teacher promises to be more understanding of his situation; the mother bursts into tears. “I can’t even call my husband for advice,” she says.

AT THE END OF ANOTHER DECEMBER DAY, Jessica appears in Critchfield’s office. She has decided to quit the drill team, which in almost any other child would trigger a minor adolescent crisis. She had joined at the suggestion of her friend Leeza Weibley, the girl whose stepfather had been killed in Iraq. But Leeza’s mother moved her family back to South Carolina at the end of school last spring, and Jessica has lost interest. “We’ve got to find something for Jessica to hold on to,” Critchfield says, to no one in particular. Teary, Jessica wafts out of the office like a trail of smoke.

“Before my father was killed, I thought we had a perfect life,” Jessica tells me later. “So much changed so fast. I just didn’t see how I was going to survive.”

Jessica did not return to school for at least a month after her father died. She was then sleeping on the floor of his office with just a pillow and a blanket; she woke up every morning, showered, ate breakfast, and then went back to sleep. Students and teachers made cards and brought food to the house, but she still would not return to Shoemaker. Finally, Linnie made her go back. The night before her return, Jessica could barely sleep, worrying what the next day would bring. “How will people react? Will they stare at me?” Initially, the students were afraid to talk to her, not knowing what to say. “I couldn’t stop crying,” Jessica says. “Just for no reason I’d start.” When Linnie would try to hug her, Jessica would pull away.

As the 2003 school year ended and 2004 began, Jessica became a perpetual source of worry to Critchfield, who was at a loss to help her. Jessica’s grades were low, and she was skipping school and hanging out with kids who were more likely to get her into trouble than help her recover. She refused to cooperate with a therapist. “You can take me,” Jessica had told Linnie, “but I won’t talk.” She didn’t see the point. What seemed to make her angriest were the people who told her that her father was in a better place. Explains Linnie: “I hated to hear those things, and Jessie especially hated to hear them, because her father’s best place was with us.”

Critchfield could see that Linnie was in too much pain to help her daughter. “Jessica was just angry,” she says. “These kids don’t know who to be angry at. At Bush? The military? Their friends, because their dads come home? They really don’t know.”

And then, in October, a year after James Blankenbecler was killed, Rohan lost his mother, and just two weeks later, Leeza lost her stepfather. The whole school was reeling, and Critchfield and the other counselors, themselves grieving, were unsure what to do. Then Critchfield thought of Jessica. “I was so lost myself, and I couldn’t begin to understand what those kids were going through,” she tells me. “And I knew she could.” She called Jessica into her office and asked her if she would be willing to talk with Rohan and Leeza. Right away, Jessica agreed: “When this happened to Leeza and Rohan, it reminded me of all the feelings I went through.” She had been thinking of reaching out but didn’t know how.

The Communities in Schools counselors helped the students set up a grief group that met every day in second period and later met for lunch in the CIS room. At first the kids were quiet; no one wanted to talk, especially about how their parents had died. But with a little prodding, the questions tumbled out over the next few weeks: Why had this happened? Why are we at war? What about the weapons of mass destruction? Were they real or not? Sometimes they talked about the good times they had shared with their parents—Jessica remembered checking her e-mail for her father’s daily messages—and sometimes they talked about how hard life was now. After her stepfather was killed, Leeza had taken over many domestic duties, including cooking dinner, cleaning the house, and putting her little brother to bed. Afterward, she’d do her homework. “Then she’d come to school the next day and start over again,” Critchfield says. One day, Rohan went to the meeting feeling particularly stressed, only to meet two new members, brothers whose father, a war veteran, had killed his wife and then himself. “I just forgot about my problems,” Rohan tells me. Even so, life was one step forward and two steps back for the kids. It was especially hard on them when Fort Hood staged a hero’s welcome for the returning 1st Cavalry, complete with parades and brass bands. Half the kids at Shoemaker were ecstatic that their parents were back home. Happy as she was for her classmates, Jessica sequestered herself in the CIS office.

In April 2005 President Bush came to Killeen, and Rohan, Leeza, and Jessica were invited to meet him. Linnie made the arrangements to get them to the event; Rohan’s father and Leeza’s mother declined the invitation. Each child sat in a cubicle in a room on the base until the president arrived and then had a picture taken with him. They all wept—“I didn’t think I was going to cry so much,” Leeza tells me—but each student took away a small measure of solace. “He was really nice,” Jessica says. “I wasn’t expecting him to be so down-to-earth. He gave me a kiss and said he was really sorry.” For just a moment, she sounds like a normal teenager, her voice high and soft.

But disappointment would soon return, brought on by Leeza’s mother’s decision to return to South Carolina. As a widow, she had lost her military housing after her husband’s death and so was headed home, where she had family and more financial support. Critchfield begged her to let Leeza finish her senior year at Shoemaker, and Linnie even offered to let Leeza live with them. Jessica and Leeza had become fast friends by the end of the year, talking to each other constantly on the phone, sharing lunch, gossip, and drill team. That both girls had been close to their fathers made their bond even stronger. But her mother refused to let Leeza stay, and Jessica was alone again. “Now I have no one to talk to,” she told Linnie.

THE DAYS AFTER THE CHRISTMAS holidays are as hard as the days before for Shoemaker’s counselors, but for different reasons. January is when the transfers arrive. On this first day back, there are 25 or so new and returning students crammed into the counselors’ office, making the air thick and humid, and at least 10 more kids sitting glumly on desks in the hall, many with parents in uniform at their sides. The crowd swells and ebbs and swells again throughout the day.

Kids change schools when their parents move to Fort Hood, and it’s up to the Shoemaker counselors to make sure they fulfill the State of Texas requirements for graduation and qualify for extracurricular activities, regardless of where they have come from. Hence, a student fluent in German still has to enroll in German 1 and 2; a football player has to prove himself all over again. “I’ll put you in P.E., and we’ll see what the coaches have to say,” Critchfield tells a huge new sophomore. Sometimes transcripts are incomplete or late arriving, and the counselors have to help students reconstruct old schedules from memory. “It’s like, ‘Okay, did you study about Texas or the Roman Empire?’” Later she tells me, “Sometimes I think, ‘I’m out of here. I can’t deal with it anymore.’ And then I can’t imagine not dealing with it all the time.”

A student waiting patiently for a schedule change tells me that his father was recently deployed. In his late forties, he had been serving in the National Guard and never dreamed he’d be called up. The family has bought a larger house because, the student explains, if his father dies in the war, his mother wants something to fall back on. On the other hand, his father believes the money he’ll earn in Iraq will come in handy, with two kids in college next year. The student tells me he’s changed his college choice to stay closer to Killeen and his mom while his father is away.

A Navy recruiter has chosen this day to drop in. Dressed in black, medals on his chest, he’s nervous and deferential to the counselors, trying to establish a workable timetable for subsequent visits. Critchfield apologizes for being swamped, explaining that a counselor had quit during Christmas break and now they were down to four.

“Do more with less,” the recruiter says. “That’s the military attitude.” Critchfield sighs in agreement.

Soon after, Jessica saunters in. “Did my mom call you?” she asks Critchfield.

Critchfield turns from her computer to study Jessica’s face. “No, why?” she asks.

Jessica shrugs. “I’m grounded,” she says, almost giddy. She hadn’t come in until eight in the morning, after being out all night without informing her mother of her plans. Still, there’s good news. “I got a tattoo,” Jessica says, beaming happily and rolling up her left sleeve to show Critchfield the deep-blue curlicues on her upper arm.

Critchfield reads the words, once to herself and then out loud, striving for just the right balance of enthusiasm and dismay. “Daddy’s princess,” she says.

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