by Calista Sprague
Capt. Greg and JoAnna Ramey await the birth of
son, Callen.
Many of us in the Chattahoochee Valley have friends, neighbors or even family members serving at Fort Benning. Holli and John Bennett bought a house in Columbus, and their son, Chase, attends kindergarten at Blanchard Elementary. Both are hard working parents and both are enlisted in the Army. “We’ve been at Fort Benning for about four years. Holli deployed twice since we’ve been stationed here,” 1st Sgt. John Bennett said. In 2003 Capt. Holli Bennett served in Iraq for five months and two years later returned to serve another four months.
John learned a great deal during his wife’s tours. “You take for granted what your wife does in the household. I couldn’t just get up and go to work everyday. I had to worry about what he was going to wear and make sure his homework was done,” he said.
Rebecca Welch, Family Advocacy Program manager at Fort Benning sees military families struggling to fulfill parenting responsibilities on a regular basis. Stressedout spouses caring for the children, managing finances and “just trying to take care of the household and everything on their own” walk through her door every day.
“I think it’s easier on the deployed person than the one staying home,” Holli said. “We were busy with the mission, but that’s all I had to focus on. You work seven days a week, but you don’t have to try to fit everything in, schedule and prioritize and all that.”
John says his parenting style remained the same despite his wife’s absence. “I just had to do more,” he remembered. “I didn’t try to fill her role, but I provided him his food and supported his sports. It was a challenge.” He credits son Chase with making the deployment easier. “He helped me out a lot, too. He would help me fold clothes and put his own clothes away.” Chase helped organize his clothes in a closet bag labeled with each day of the week. “We would get home from school, and as soon as he got out of the car, he would get the mail, get the newspaper and then he would immediately go upstairs and put all his old clothes in the dirty clothes and put his new ones in the bag,” John said.
Greg Ramey back home with his children
Callen, Madison and Gavin
The difficulty factor rose considerably after Greg came home for a short R&R in June before returning to Iraq. The couple found themselves expecting a new baby. Their second son, Callen, was born a month early, just weeks after Greg returned from Iraq. “This pregnancy took everything out of me,” JoAnna admitted. She understands the struggle of single parents to maintain discipline. “You just get tired. Tired of being the one making every single little decision from TV watching to homework. What they are going to wear to what they are going to eat. Can they have a snack, every tiny little decision. It weighs you down. It is harder to keep up and it is harder to be strict, I found, especially when you’re not physically up to your maximum self.”
Of course, the deployed spouses have their own issues to face. While dodging bullets and carrying out the Army’s directives, they miss out on months of their children’s development. Young children seem to change every day. Imagine missing out on five months or a year. “A lot of the milestones happened while I was gone,” Greg said, “Gavin started walking and I missed Madison’s pre-K graduation.”
Holli Bennett missed half of Chase’s second year during her first tour in Iraq. “It was harder the first time, because Chase was a lot younger and he was doing stuff for the first time. When I left, he wasn’t even talking that much and when I came home, it was almost like he was a different person,” she said.
Both couples bridged the distance with regular communication. “We were able to communicate pretty regularly through e-mail, and I tried to call home every two weeks,” Greg Ramey said. JoAnna kept him in touch with the kids’ activities and prompted him with questions to ask Madison. “It helped get her to say more than ‘Hi, Daddy,’” Greg recalled. John Bennett kept his wife up to date as well. “We were always talking on the phone or e-mailing,” he said. “We knew what was going on in each other’s lives. We were talking about what Chase had done. She was abreast of everything that was going on in our lives.”
Holli’s first deployment to Iraq was a different story, however. “I hardly talked to [John] on the phone just because the systems weren’t set up,” she said. Holli was a part of the initial push to take control of Iraq. “We called maybe once a month. There was a big delay and it was hard to understand,” she remembered. “I was worried to death,” John added, “I would wake up at two in the morning just to turn the TV on to see exactly what was happening. But two years later, we’d established more hard structures. We had e-mails and phone calls, so I knew what was going on. So I was not quite as worried for her this time.”
Holli, John, and 5-year-old
Chase Bennett
“I think that’s the biggest thing. You really have to make a conscious effort as the person away from the family to stay in touch,” Greg Ramey said. “They almost become figments of your imagination. You get to the point after a month of two, you feel like you’ve always been there. That’s your reality.” Greg went on to say that the photos and phone calls helped him stay connected to the fact that he had a wife and kids waiting at home. As he and JoAnna settled into their routines worlds apart, each began to feel as though their life together became surreal. “When you’re in the middle of it all, you’re so used to doing your own thing and surviving day to day, you think, I’m married?” JoAnna remarked.
The kids needed the phone calls, too. “I could tell a difference in my daughter when she was at school or over at a friends house and she would miss his phone call. She’d start missing him more and asking and talking about him,” JoAnna said. She would e-mail Greg and request a phone call for Madison. “He was really good about calling if he could. And then he’d talk to her and she’d be fine for a few weeks. It’s just not easy, that’s for sure.”
Dealing with the stress of separation due to deployments has not been easy, but both families have learned from their experiences. Holli Bennett mentioned the importance of working together and refraining from judgmental comments. “John might not do stuff exactly like I do it, but what he does works fine. I have to be careful not to correct him. And we try to support each other in our decisions.”
People may not realize the difficulty of reintegrating when the spouse returns. The adjustments can be similar to living with someone for the first time. The balance of responsibilities and decisionmaking must be altered as the deployed spouse resumes his or her role in the household.
For Greg Ramey, the shift was immediate. Only a couple weeks after his return from Iraq, JoAnna was sent to the hospital in premature labor and kept on extended bed rest. “I had to jump in feet first taking care of Gavin and Madison, because she was in the hospital,” he said. JoAnna admits to teasing Greg, “I like to tease him, but I think it was good for him because he got to see my perspective on what it’s like to juggle the kids and the laundry and the dishes and the trash.” Greg attacked meals, bedtime and other chores like a military assignment, breaking down tasks and giving the kids time limits at each stage in order to get everything done. “You only have so much time in the day,” he said.
Now holding two-week-old Callen in their arms, the family is remarkably relaxed and content. The couple worried most that two year-old Gavin might not remember Daddy. “Our biggest concern as we neared the end was Gavin’s reaction. Would he recognize who I was? And actually it didn’t take but a few minutes after the welcome home ceremony when we got off the plane and he was my little buddy,” Greg said proudly. Even as he spoke, Gavin climbed up on the couch and snuggled close, sitting side by side with his dad.
When asked what advice she would pass along to stressed out mothers, JoAnna immediately said, “Take time for yourself. That’s one of the best things I had to do for my own sanity.” She says to get a babysitter and get your hair and nails done or do something you love like sewing or scrapbooking. “You’ll be better and healthier. You’ll be a better parent and a better spouse for it, too.”
JoAnna also recommends talking with others.“ Even if you have to go somewhere and talk to a counselor or something, just to get it off your chest.” She says that well-meaning friends and family may not be able to be supportive in the way you need. She found camaraderie and traded babysitting with a neighbor.
Just as a community offers day care, counselors and financial planners to its citizens, Fort Benning offers a myriad of services to the soldiers and their families. “We go out as part of the briefing to families prior to them deploying, and we talk about all the services we offer so that the soldiers understand that the families are being taken care of while they’re gone,” Welch said. “If there’s an emergency situation and their car breaks down, then Army Emergency Relief can help. If the spouse needs a second income or just wants to get a job to keep from being lonely while the soldier is deployed, then we have Family Member Employment Program. If they run into financial problems and they’ve never been the sole person paying their bills, or they have to go out and buy a new car, we have the Financial Readiness Program,” she said. Welch manages the Family Advocacy Program. Her group is often the first line of defense when a family encounters difficulty. “We’re like crisis intervention and can direct people to the other programs,” she said.
Welch acknowledges that deployments can put strain on families. “It’s hard on everybody that’s involved, especially the younger you are,” she said. “Some wives have had a newborn, or maybe the baby was just six weeks old and now that one or two-year-old doesn’t remember their mommy or daddy.” She stresses the importance of getting help early when facing family issues. “It’s just like a car.
If you don’t change that oil or replace the windshield blades, you can’t just drive and drive your car and not maintain it.” Welch adds that a family needs maintenance as well. “When a problem comes up, you’ve got to handle it. If you don’t, at some given moment, everything is going to crash.”
Welch’s advice holds true for all of us, not just soldiers. All families experience difficulty at one time or another and need support. “We all have problems,” Welch said. “We all have stress in our lives, I don’t care who you are. But the main thing is how you handle the stress, how you handle the problem.” Her office makes sure the soldiers and their families get the help they need. She says the Chattahoochee Valley community has also helped during the war in Iraq. “I can say that Phenix City, Columbus and around has all pulled together. You had people buying phone cards for the soldiers. You had people out in the community that had dinners for some of the spouses, and businesses gave discounts to the spouses. Being a social worker, I have to say the outpouring from the community has just been most wonderful.”
As the war in Iraq drags on, soldiers remain separated from their loved ones. These dedicated moms and dads work hard to stay connected to their children and spouses while fulfilling the Army’s mission in a distant land. Welch says that families need continued support from the community. “Everybody’s needs are different. We never know from one time to the next what the needs are going to be for a particular family,” she said, “but we can accept funds and buy the things that they need.” If you would like to help the families left at home, you can call Army Community Service at 706-545-7517.
