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thedrifter
10-30-05, 05:13 PM
Oct. 30, 2005, 1:12PM
For each number, a face and a family
The loved ones of military dead struggle to heal and try to keep memories alive
By ALLAN TURNER and ROSANNA RUIZ
2005 Houston Chronicle

PEOPLE generally have one of two reasons for traveling Montgomery County's remote Gay Lake Road: They live there or they're lost. But as the strange blue car trailed her down the pitch-black lane one night last fall, Michele Sanderson's imagination scripted other reasons for its presence, each more horrible than the last.

Sanderson, taking her young son and daughter home after an evening of football and drill-team practice, knew she couldn't elude the vehicle. When she turned into her drive, it did, too. Now truly frightened, Sanderson mashed the accelerator to the floor, screeching around the curve to her mobile home. Relentlessly, the mysterious car followed. Then it stopped.

"The door opened," Sanderson recalled of that night in October 2004, "and I saw the uniforms. I knew what they were going to say."

"Are you Michele Sanderson?" one of the occupants inquired.

"Yes," responded Sanderson. "And you're here about Bill."

That's how Sanderson learned that her son, 21-year-old Army Ranger Cpl. William M. Amundson Jr., had been killed in war. Though the way the news gets delivered often varies — Willie and Judy Kimble were awakened by their doorbell at 3 a.m., Barbara and David Rozier got a phone call from a Dallas relative — the message always is the same: a beloved son or daughter, wife or husband has died in service to the nation.

The Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., catapulted the United States into its first protracted war in three decades. Last week, the 2,000th U.S. soldier died in Iraq; an additional 200, including Amundson, have been killed in Afghanistan. The death toll from the Houston area stands at 44.

Beyond the toll
Each death represents a private grief and, often, a very public spectacle. Families grapple with the worst kind of death — that of the young — beneath the hot glare of television lights. But when the funerals and memorials end and the lights go dark, those deaths soon fade into statistics and the mourners are left to their sorrow.

"Please, do not let our heroes become faceless, expendable statistics in history books," pleaded Amy Branham, the mother of one young Houston-area soldier killed in a stateside accident during the buildup. "For those of us who loved them with every fiber of our being, do not let their sacrifice be for nothing."

Not since the Vietnam War, which claimed approximately 58,000 U.S. combatants — including 16,500 in 1968 alone — have so many Americans struggled so desperately to rebuild lives shattered by war. Membership in American Gold Star Mothers, a small support group for women who have lost children in battle, steadily has grown. Elsewhere counseling centers and church pews are filled with the bereaved.

"It's been very, very hard on my wife and me," said Jose Contreras of Pasadena, whose son, Marine Lance Cpl. Pedro Contreras, 27, was killed in Iraq on June 21, 2004. "I don't have a problem admitting this to you: I still cry every day."

Speaking on Oct. 19, the first anniversary of her son's death in a Humvee accident, Sanderson recalled how she sat in shock as the Army officials offered their condolences.

"It was a rote speech," she said. "They say the same thing to everyone."

Then she remembered that her children, Taylor, then 11, and Megan, 13, still were in the car.

Sanderson summoned them inside.

"They came in the trailer, and I couldn't even tell them," Sanderson said. "I couldn't get it out of my mouth." When the officers conveyed the sad news, the children collapsed in a heap on the sofa, crying inconsolably. "And there was nothing you could do," their mother said. "You would go to bed crying and wake up crying. It went on like that for a week or two."

For parents, said Dr. Jennifer Pate, a psychiatrist with Baylor College of Medicine's trauma and grief program, the grief over losing a child — with its shock, numbness, sleeplessness, upset stomachs — is amplified when the child is killed in war.

"Day after day with media coverage, every time they hear the news, they're reminded of the death," she said. "That can be an intense experience."

Hard to share pain

In Katy, the family of Texas A&M graduate Jonathan Rozier — a second lieutenant killed in a Baghdad grenade attack on July 19, 2003, just three days after his 25th birthday — was rocked as if it had been struck by the blast.

Once outgoing, the soldier's parents, David and Barbara Rozier, became withdrawn, almost reclusive. Their youngest son, Joshua, now 18, was ready to hop the first Iraq-bound airplane and take up arms. Their daughter, Elizabeth, 25, abandoned her career in Dallas to return to her old room in the family home. Aware that such crises often drive couples apart, the Roziers struggled to overcome their sorrow enough to offer one another support.

Their grief, the Roziers recalled, was massive, nearly overwhelming. But when they tried to "seek validation" by sharing their sorrow with others, they could find no words for their pain.

"For people who haven't gone through it," David Rozier said, "there's no way to understand what it's like. At first, every day and night is horrible. There is never a moment when it is not constantly with you. As time goes on, the good days begin to outnumber the bad ones. After 2 1/2 years, almost every day is a good day. ... Time is a healer, no question. But still you grieve."

George and Cindy Houghton of Houston maintained a prayerful vigil for a full month at the bedside of their son, Army Capt. Andy Houghton, after he suffered a critical head injury on July 10, 2004, while on patrol in Iraq. Sustaining them through their watchful days was their son's assurance that, "If something happens to me, I've had a wonderful life."

For weeks, the 25-year-old West Point graduate appeared to improve at Washington, D.C.'s Water Reed Army Medical Center. Occasionally he showed signs of emerging consciousness. He uttered words — "ice," "hi," and "dad." But on Aug. 9, an aneurysm burst, and the soldier went into convulsions and died.

"There are periods of normalcy that are interrupted by waves of grief," Houghton said.

"We have, so to speak, experienced all the 'firsts.' Christmas was very difficult. Andy's birthday, the anniversary of his death — they were hard."

Once-joyful family occasions now haunt other survivors as well.

Birthdays are tough

Earlier this month, Willie and Judy Kimble, parents of Marine Staff Sgt. Dexter Kimble, killed Jan. 26 when his helicopter crashed in a desert sandstorm, worriedly watched the calendar as their son's Oct. 27 birthday approached.

Kimble's father endeavored to remain stoic.

"Being in the military you have to expect the worst," said the Vietnam veteran. "Wars take life. They don't give it."

But the birthday — it would have been the Marine's 31st — loomed large. Judy Kimble said she might spend the day with her daughters, Erika and Andrea. Willie Kimble, who attends weekly counseling sessions to cope with his grief, admitted he simply would deal with the day when it arrived.

Sanderson spent her son's birthday "cleaning, just cleaning." And knowing that the first anniversary of his death was approaching, was enough to "shut me up in a box for three weeks," she said.

"I just wasn't 'going there,' " she said. "In my heart, I know that things are going to be OK because I've seen some awesome things in the last year.

"But a mama misses her boy. She misses the smell. She misses the hugs, the way he used to say 'mama.' I'm just human. I miss my baby."

For some, intense sorrow is a constant companion.

"It's like your world is spinning one way and just stopped and is completely going the other way," said Dewana Kimble, Dexter Kimble's widow. For the sake of her four children, ages 1 to 11, the Marietta, Calif., woman said she consciously cut short her grieving.

"If they see that you're better, then they'll be better," she said. "It just destroyed their whole world. My 6-year-old wouldn't eat and my 3-year-old just stopped talking. ... It's something I wouldn't wish on anybody to tell their kids their father is not coming home, when all along you had told them he'll be back soon."

Void that can't be filled

Jose and Maria Contreras, overwhelmed by the memories that lingered in their Jacinto City home, moved to Pasadena, where they have converted their living room into a virtual shrine to their son.

Photographs of Pedro Contreras, resplendent in his Marine uniform, share space with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the American flag that draped his coffin.

"I'm never going to fill that gap, that emptiness that my son's death left in my heart," Jose Contreras said.

Across town, Cesar Carballo, a Vietnam veteran, struggles daily to fill the void left by his son, Army Spc. Adolfo Carballo, 20, who was killed in an April 10, 2004, grenade attack.

Often, Carballo said, he finds himself addressing his 9-year-old son Cesar by the dead man's name.

Carballo said his family makes weekly pilgrimages to the Houston National Cemetery, where the soldier lies among other Iraq war casualties.

"We go there and pray," Carballo said. "Even though he's not there anymore — I know his spirit is in heaven — it's a good place to pray to God."

Carballo and others quoted in this article offered their stories days before the announcement came that a 2,000th American had been killed in Iraq — a front-page news event that last week generated local and national anti-war protests and renewed soul-searching over U.S. war policy.

Rice University political science professor Ric Stoll said the milestone would jolt a nation already divided by the war. He likened the rift between war supporters and opponents to one that developed during the Vietnam conflict and led to President Johnson's political ruin.

"The American public just isn't used to these long, drawn-out things," he said.

A recent Gallup Poll found only 32 percent of those queried supported President Bush's Iraqi policy. Although some families contributing to this article expressed ambivalence toward the military and the war, all said they wholeheartedly supported their sons' decisions to serve their country.

Willie Kimble recalled that his son, Dexter, had an "understanding of life" when he joined the Marine Corps at 17. Though he supported his son's decision, he admonished him to weigh carefully the necessity of taking human life in combat.

Shortly before his death, the 13-year Marine had opted to re-enlist.

"He wanted to fly," his father said. "He had a passion for flying."

Drawn to service

Barbara Rozier thought her son's participation in Texas A&M's Corps of Cadets and his subsequent Army duty were a "good fit."

His father, David Rozier, agreed.

"We recognized the military wasn't the highest career you can have," he said. "You're not going to get wealthy, but it's an honorable profession. Jonathan was drawn to the service aspects. I couldn't have been more pleased. ... Jonathan was old enough to know that it was a dangerous career. He didn't go into it with rose-colored glasses. We certainly didn't have any Pollyanna-ism. Ours was a very serious, eyes-open kind of support."

George Houghton said he and his wife supported their son's choice of a West Point education and a military career "110 percent."

"I believe my son's sacrifice was worth it because Andy believed the sacrifice was worth it," Houghton said. "He believed that his country had provided a lot of freedom and opportunities, and he felt he owed the country something back."

Though the Houghtons had concerns for their son's safety — and now worry about their younger son, Matthew, now in the Army — they "turned those over to God," Houghton said.

"Andy was, first of all, God's child before he was Cindy's and mine," he said. "God had a plan for Andy, for his life and his death."

Cesar Carballo, who emphasized his patriotism but said the American public and government abandoned Vietnam vet, took a darker view. When his son, active in high school ROTC, broached the possibility of a military career, Carballo urged him to talk with a homeless veteran who lived under a highway overpass near their home.

"I told him to get him a beer and talk to him," Carballo said. "I told him to let him show him the hole in his arm. Tell how he got ripped off, about the medals. He lost his wife. He lost his job. He hit the beer and drugs. That's how he ended up under the freeway."

After the deaths, Houston-area families sought solace where they could find it.

The Houghtons, eager that something positive should come from their son's death, used life insurance benefits to fund a foundation to support charities at which Andy had volunteered. Among them were the Special Olympics and Taping for the Blind. Money, too, has been provided for scholarships at the soldier's old high school, Strake Jesuit College Preparatory, and for summer camps for underprivileged children.

The Roziers — Jonathan shipped out for Iraq in March 2003 on his mother's 47th birthday — began collecting money to provide servicemen and women prepaid phone cards. More than 1,000 of the cards have been distributed.

Michele Sanderson turned to work with American Gold Star Mothers, where she offered support to newly bereaved moms by writing them letters.

All expressed an unwavering faith in God — and a belief that their sons are in heaven.

"When God comes into your life and death breaks you," Sanderson said, "you're in such shock. There's no comfort. Nothing anyone can say. Nothing anyone can do. God strips you of everything and there's no escaping. No going left. No going right. Just staying on the path and walking toward him."

Near death, a miracle

After Adolfo's death, Carballo's health declined. Once a robust 148 pounds, he lost nearly half his weight, and his liver and kidneys all but stopped working.

By August, he was hospitalized and near death as a desperately needed liver transplant failed to materialize.

"My birthday is on August 20 and Adolfo's was on August 27," he said. "I said, 'Hey, doctor, I didn't celebrate my birthday. Could you let me go to the house and the cemetery?' "

The doctor refused.

"On the 25th, it looked like in five or six days I might die," Carballo said.

Then, on Aug. 27th, the doctor burst into Carballo's hospital room to announce that a liver suitable for transplant had been found.

"That was an experience," Carballo said. "Adolfo sent that liver for me because I was dying."

The depths of Maria Contreras' Catholic faith are evidenced by the rosary and scapula draped around her neck. She prays the rosary daily, and, with her husband, often attends Spanish Mass at St. Pius Catholic Church.

"All that I can do," she said, "is pray that all of this ends soon."

Like the Houghtons, Barbara Rozier said she and her husband "put it all in God's hands."

"God is the one who gives life," she said, "and tells us when it's over. ... Everyone is going to die. Jonathan was sooner than you would expect.

"But everyone dies. Not everyone lives."

allan.turner@chron.com

rosanna.ruiz@chron.com

Ellie