thedrifter
12-19-05, 07:06 AM
Marine's Widow Looks to the Future, Can't Forget the Past
A Yucca Valley woman struggles to help her children understand their father's death and the cause he died for.
By Tony Perry, Times Staff Writer
YUCCA VALLEY — As he approaches the second Christmas since his father was killed in Iraq, 6-year-old Blake Rowe seems to be coming to terms with his loss as well as a child can.
"The best thing is that I know he's in heaven," said Blake, his usually sprightly voice dropping to a whisper. "The worst thing is that I want him here with me."
Blake's sister, Caitlin, 4, is not as far along in her understanding. She wishes her father could still throw her into the air and catch her in his strong arms.
She has only recently emerged from knowing that her father, Marine Maj. Alan Rowe, is dead today but being unclear whether he will be dead tomorrow.
For Dawn Rowe, 37, helping her children cope with the death of their father is a day-to-day process. She receives counseling at the nearby Marine base at Twentynine Palms, but there are no manuals — each family is different.
"It's so hard to know the right thing for us to do to move on," she said. "I walk a balance between maintaining his memory without the house becoming a shrine to him."
She does not want her children to be consumed daily with mourning and grief that they cannot assimilate.
But neither does she want them to be deprived of knowing that their father was a loving parent and a brave Marine who believed in leading from the front and died for a cause he supported wholly. Her own support for that mission is unchanged by her husband's death.
"For Blake, the hardest thing for him to understand is why there was a cause greater than our family that his daddy gave his life for," said Rowe.
Christmas makes the emotional balancing act more difficult.
Rowe has placed her husband's Christmas stocking near a Nativity scene on the opposite side of the living room from where the family's other stockings hang over the fireplace.
She recently removed some of his Marine Corps mementos from a wall in the kitchen. His clothes are now stored in the garage.
But she encourages Blake and Caitlin, before bedtime, to listen to a tape that their father sent them in 2003 from Najaf when he was on his first deployment to Iraq.
In it, he talks about his concern for the Iraqi people and how their deprivation should make all Americans feel lucky, and how the Marines are in Iraq to help the Iraqis have a better life. He mentions giving candy to the Iraqi children and showing them pictures of his family.
"I want you to know I'll be home soon and I love you very much," Rowe says on the tape.
Listening along with a reporter, Dawn Rowe's eyes misted over.
"That's hard to hear," she said.
Alan Rowe, who was 35, was in his second tour when he was killed Sept. 3, 2004. He was the commander of weapons company, 1st battalion, 7th regiment, 1st Marine division, based at Twentynine Palms.
He had gone on patrol along the Syrian border to show his Marines, many of them young and doing their first combat tours, that he was not asking them to do anything he would not do himself. He and two other Marines were killed by a roadside bomb.
In the days before his death, he had sent letters to Blake and Caitlin. The letters arrived after Marine officers had come to the family home to notify Dawn of his death. The letters will remain unopened until the children are older.
Rowe has met twice with President Bush, last year at Camp Pendleton and this year in Idaho, where her husband's parents live.
Rowe and the children had rushed to Idaho to meet the president and first lady after her husband's sister participated in an antiwar rally wearing a button with Alan Rowe's picture.
She had been appalled at what her sister-in-law had done.
"Her brother would have been horrified that his name was being used to oppose a cause he believed in," Rowe said.
The women are no longer on speaking terms.
Because of the feelings of Rowe and other family members, Diana Rowe Pauls no longer wears a button with her brother's picture. But she has not changed her views about the U.S. mission in Iraq and whether her brother died in vain.
"It breaks my heart that Dawn is upset with me," Pauls said in a telephone interview from Idaho. "I've noticed a lot of people like Dawn have to hang on to the idea that Mr. Bush is the president and so we have to follow him without asking questions."
Rowe said she has no problem with her sister-in-law and other people debating the war but she wishes they would talk to soldiers and Marines about progress "on the ground" and whether they still believe in the mission.
She appreciates the concern and sympathy shown but bridles at the assumption that because her husband was killed she now opposes the war in the manner of Cindy Sheehan or her sister-in-law, or agrees that U.S. forces should be withdrawn.
"I don't want anything that will devalue my husband's life or his efforts," she said. "Alan was doing what he wanted to do, and I don't want any pity for that."
Last spring, military prosecutors asked Rowe to write a letter that could be read in an Iraqi court at the trial of four suspects in her husband's death. In her response, she mentioned her husband's tape and his view that "the majority of Iraqi people are good [but] that evil exists everywhere."
In the letter she said she will try to ensure that Blake and Caitlin do not hate even those people responsible for killing their father and that "I will also try to teach them there are reasons worth dying for that are larger than us as individuals or families."
Rowe says that she is different from many of the women whose husbands have been killed in Iraq. Many were living on base or in rental housing when tragedy struck. Their tendency was to seek the comfort of extended families.
"Most of the widows go home," she said recently.
For Rowe, home is the house that she and her husband bought in 2003 in this desert community. She is able to devote full time to raising her children.
She worked for eight years for a publishing company, including selling advertising for a newspaper.
Survivor benefits and her husband's pension after 18 years in the Marine Corps have given the family financial security. Still, the future is uncertain, particularly as Blake and Caitlin get older and begin to ask about their father.
"As a wife, I'd rather be married to a Marine for 11 years who loved his job than be married for 50 years to a banker who was miserable at his job," Rowe said.
"But I'm just not sure the children will feel the same."
A Yucca Valley woman struggles to help her children understand their father's death and the cause he died for.
By Tony Perry, Times Staff Writer
YUCCA VALLEY — As he approaches the second Christmas since his father was killed in Iraq, 6-year-old Blake Rowe seems to be coming to terms with his loss as well as a child can.
"The best thing is that I know he's in heaven," said Blake, his usually sprightly voice dropping to a whisper. "The worst thing is that I want him here with me."
Blake's sister, Caitlin, 4, is not as far along in her understanding. She wishes her father could still throw her into the air and catch her in his strong arms.
She has only recently emerged from knowing that her father, Marine Maj. Alan Rowe, is dead today but being unclear whether he will be dead tomorrow.
For Dawn Rowe, 37, helping her children cope with the death of their father is a day-to-day process. She receives counseling at the nearby Marine base at Twentynine Palms, but there are no manuals — each family is different.
"It's so hard to know the right thing for us to do to move on," she said. "I walk a balance between maintaining his memory without the house becoming a shrine to him."
She does not want her children to be consumed daily with mourning and grief that they cannot assimilate.
But neither does she want them to be deprived of knowing that their father was a loving parent and a brave Marine who believed in leading from the front and died for a cause he supported wholly. Her own support for that mission is unchanged by her husband's death.
"For Blake, the hardest thing for him to understand is why there was a cause greater than our family that his daddy gave his life for," said Rowe.
Christmas makes the emotional balancing act more difficult.
Rowe has placed her husband's Christmas stocking near a Nativity scene on the opposite side of the living room from where the family's other stockings hang over the fireplace.
She recently removed some of his Marine Corps mementos from a wall in the kitchen. His clothes are now stored in the garage.
But she encourages Blake and Caitlin, before bedtime, to listen to a tape that their father sent them in 2003 from Najaf when he was on his first deployment to Iraq.
In it, he talks about his concern for the Iraqi people and how their deprivation should make all Americans feel lucky, and how the Marines are in Iraq to help the Iraqis have a better life. He mentions giving candy to the Iraqi children and showing them pictures of his family.
"I want you to know I'll be home soon and I love you very much," Rowe says on the tape.
Listening along with a reporter, Dawn Rowe's eyes misted over.
"That's hard to hear," she said.
Alan Rowe, who was 35, was in his second tour when he was killed Sept. 3, 2004. He was the commander of weapons company, 1st battalion, 7th regiment, 1st Marine division, based at Twentynine Palms.
He had gone on patrol along the Syrian border to show his Marines, many of them young and doing their first combat tours, that he was not asking them to do anything he would not do himself. He and two other Marines were killed by a roadside bomb.
In the days before his death, he had sent letters to Blake and Caitlin. The letters arrived after Marine officers had come to the family home to notify Dawn of his death. The letters will remain unopened until the children are older.
Rowe has met twice with President Bush, last year at Camp Pendleton and this year in Idaho, where her husband's parents live.
Rowe and the children had rushed to Idaho to meet the president and first lady after her husband's sister participated in an antiwar rally wearing a button with Alan Rowe's picture.
She had been appalled at what her sister-in-law had done.
"Her brother would have been horrified that his name was being used to oppose a cause he believed in," Rowe said.
The women are no longer on speaking terms.
Because of the feelings of Rowe and other family members, Diana Rowe Pauls no longer wears a button with her brother's picture. But she has not changed her views about the U.S. mission in Iraq and whether her brother died in vain.
"It breaks my heart that Dawn is upset with me," Pauls said in a telephone interview from Idaho. "I've noticed a lot of people like Dawn have to hang on to the idea that Mr. Bush is the president and so we have to follow him without asking questions."
Rowe said she has no problem with her sister-in-law and other people debating the war but she wishes they would talk to soldiers and Marines about progress "on the ground" and whether they still believe in the mission.
She appreciates the concern and sympathy shown but bridles at the assumption that because her husband was killed she now opposes the war in the manner of Cindy Sheehan or her sister-in-law, or agrees that U.S. forces should be withdrawn.
"I don't want anything that will devalue my husband's life or his efforts," she said. "Alan was doing what he wanted to do, and I don't want any pity for that."
Last spring, military prosecutors asked Rowe to write a letter that could be read in an Iraqi court at the trial of four suspects in her husband's death. In her response, she mentioned her husband's tape and his view that "the majority of Iraqi people are good [but] that evil exists everywhere."
In the letter she said she will try to ensure that Blake and Caitlin do not hate even those people responsible for killing their father and that "I will also try to teach them there are reasons worth dying for that are larger than us as individuals or families."
Rowe says that she is different from many of the women whose husbands have been killed in Iraq. Many were living on base or in rental housing when tragedy struck. Their tendency was to seek the comfort of extended families.
"Most of the widows go home," she said recently.
For Rowe, home is the house that she and her husband bought in 2003 in this desert community. She is able to devote full time to raising her children.
She worked for eight years for a publishing company, including selling advertising for a newspaper.
Survivor benefits and her husband's pension after 18 years in the Marine Corps have given the family financial security. Still, the future is uncertain, particularly as Blake and Caitlin get older and begin to ask about their father.
"As a wife, I'd rather be married to a Marine for 11 years who loved his job than be married for 50 years to a banker who was miserable at his job," Rowe said.
"But I'm just not sure the children will feel the same."