thedrifter
03-18-08, 07:49 AM
Loyal weighs the cost
In the central Wisconsin city of Loyal, two men who died answering their country's call are honored as heroes. Esteem is less secure for the war in which they fell.
By BILL GLAUBER
bglauber@journalsentinel.com
Posted: March 15, 2008
First of three parts
Loyal - Coni Meyer lives with her husband in the old bank building on the quiet main street of this old farm town in the middle of Wisconsin.
She's 50, works in the main office at Loyal High School and probably knows every teenager, parent and even most of the grandparents who still call this special, peaceful place home.
"There's a quote that a small town is like a big family, and that is so true," she says. "All you have to do is to be here during a tragedy, watch the flow at the funeral home. It's unbelievable."
Tragedy has come to Loyal these past five years, just as it has come to other small towns and rural places across America, where service to country still leads men and women to fight America's wars, even a war as politically contentious as the one now taking place in Iraq.
Loyal supports its soldiers and honors its war dead even as it quietly assesses a war launched five years ago this week, a war still without end.
There can be no other way to talk of this war in a place such as this.
Two men of Loyal and its surrounding communities died in Iraq.
"How do you overcome evil?" Meyer says. "Good people die for a cause that is worthwhile. That is not easy."
Meyer has a niece named Nancy Olson.
Four years ago, Nancy's husband, Todd, a member of the Wisconsin National Guard, packed his duffel bag and went off to fight in Iraq. On Dec. 26, 2004, a day no one around here will forget, word filtered back to Loyal that Staff Sgt. Todd Olson, 36, father of four, vice president at a local bank, youth football coach, was grievously wounded on a foot patrol in the dusty, battered city of Samarra in Iraq. He died of his injuries.
Loyal's residents made their way to the funeral home, brought casseroles and desserts to a potluck supper for the grieving family and then packed the high school gym and the school hallways for a public memorial.
"It was very holy in the gym," Meyer says. "It was silent. It was full."
On a cold January day, after a service for family and close friends, Todd Olson was laid to rest in the snow-covered earth at the Lutheran cemetery.
Meyer teaches confirmation class at St. Anthony Catholic Church, a sturdy brick building atop a little slope where parishioners gather to pray, renew faith, strengthen a community that has stuck together through seasons good and bad, through wars.
One of her confirmation students was a kid named Josh Schmitz, a football player and drummer who lived outside the city limits but attended Loyal schools. He wanted nothing more than to grow up and be a Marine. He fulfilled his dream, came home on leave after basic training and proudly wore his Marine dress uniform as his boot heels clicked in the hallways at Loyal High School. Coni Meyer remembers that day so well, for she kept his dress hat in a safe place, in the school office.
On Dec. 26, 2006, awful news flickered through the town again like Morse code along an old telegraph wire. Marine Cpl. Josh Schmitz, 21, was killed in combat in Iraq. He left behind grief-stricken parents and siblings.
Once again, residents gathered to honor, pray and bury one of their own, in snow-covered ground at the Catholic cemetery on the town's outskirts.
"We have a hole in our heart," Coni Meyer says.
Two different worlds
Even now, five years after U.S. warplanes and missiles thundered through night skies above Baghdad and military forces rolled through the desert, it is difficult to bridge the space between Loyal and Iraq.
Here is a city of four bars, three churches, three gas stations, two feed mills, two banks, a bowling alley, grocery store, modest homes and 1,290 people. The community is served by two full-time police officers, 28 volunteers in the Fire Department, 12 volunteers on the ambulance crew, a mayor and six city council members.
Through its schools, Loyal is tethered to another 3,000 people who live in surrounding townships and communities that dot the rolling farmland. Some of the old farms are now owned by Old Order Amish families who ride the back roads in horse-drawn buggies painted black.
Over there, in Iraq, is an expanse of desert, cluttered, broken cities, a society that continues a fitful and violent emergence from dictatorship, all while under the occupation and protection of U.S. forces.
It is so peaceful in one place, often so bloody in another.
In Loyal, people such as Meyer provide the mortar that holds together the structure of the community.
She's efficient, warm, organized - opinionated, too, with short, light brown hair, a soft voice and a calm presence behind the big desk in the main office at Loyal High School, where she is an assistant to the principal.
"We're not a military town," she says.
Not officially, anyway. But a pride in the military, and military service, runs through Loyal's history, pumps through its veins.
The place took its name from Civil War veterans who returned to their farms, shops and mills, men who proclaimed they were loyal to the Union.
That loyalty is tacked to a large plaque at American Legion Post 175, more than 700 tiny pieces of wood emblazoned with the names of those from the area who served in America's armed forces, from the War of 1812 through Desert Storm.
The 1920 Loyal High School yearbook "The Reaper" included a dedication poem "To Our Soldiers." The poem began:
"They left their homes behind them,
And bade their friends goodbye;
They gave their all to Uncle Sam
Ready to dare and die"
Near the high school lies Loyal Veterans Memorial Park, created five years ago by school kids moved by stories of sacrifice by the veterans in their city. A late winter wind leaves flags flapping, teases a song from chimes. The names of scores of the area's veterans are engraved in stones on a walkway. "All Gave Some, Some Gave All" are words inscribed on matching marble benches.
Signs hang in downtown storefronts:
"Gone, But Not Forgotten. Josh Schmitz. Todd Olson."
There is not one anti-war sign in the city.
"It isn't going to help a grieving family if you're angry," Meyer says.
Olson's parents and siblings still live in and around Loyal. So do two of his sons, his daughter and his widow, Nancy Olson. Josh Schmitz's siblings attend Loyal schools, and his father oversees a thriving furniture business outside of town that produced the bookshelves and front desk at the local library.
A handful of local soldiers currently serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Judging the costs of war
People don't often talk publicly of the war, but privately, they consider the war's costs in lives and money against the benefits that may have come to Iraq.
There is local opposition to the war, according to a survey the Journal Sentinel recently conducted. The unscientific poll drew responses from 224 people who said they resided in Loyal.
Two-thirds of those who chose to answer the survey said they opposed the U.S. war in Iraq. Just more than half of those who responded to the survey said the U.S. should begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within a year, and one-fifth favored an immediate withdrawal.
Listen to the voices:
"We need to decide how we leave this to Iraq," says Gary R. Weirauch, 61, chairman of the board of Citizens State Bank, past commander of the local Legion post and a resident of nearby Neillsville. "We need to have them make decisions on their own. They've got to rebuild their infrastructure, their roads and their utilities."
"I support the military," says Dan McNeely, 53, who owns an insurance agency. "I want them to finish the job."
"I'm not sure where it is getting us, the money being spent, the lives we're losing," says Judy Bobrofsky, 60, the chief librarian at the Loyal library.
Nancy Olson, 39, says opinion in Loyal reflects the national mood.
"They feel it has been dragging on too long," she says. "Everyone wants a quick fix. But you know, everyone forgets what Germany was like after World War II. Things don't change overnight."
There's no forgetting the war in the Olson household. An American flag is painted on one wall in the home's basement, and Todd Olson's medals are displayed in a cabinet. There's a stuffed bear, sewn from one of Todd Olson's Army fatigues.
This year, Nancy Olson moved to Rhinelander to take a job at a Bible camp. The job fell through, but she still spends weekdays in Rhinelander with her daughter, Kasey, 9, who attends school there. But on weekends, mother and daughter return to the comfort of Loyal, to a home that sits kitty-corner from where Todd Olson's parents live.
Jesse Olson, 19, is the spitting image of his dad, a big man, a strong chin. He grapples with the war.
"As soon as it happened, I hated the war," he says of his father's death. "When I thought about it, I decided it's wrong to pull out now, after we've come so far. For a while, nothing seemed good. There were shootings and bombings left and right.
"Things are starting to come together. Just to pull out. . . what are all these deaths for?"
It is a painful question in a small city struggling with loss.
In the main office at the local high school, Meyer talks of the death of two soldiers. She begins to cry.
"There is still that hole," she says. "You can have 100 people who are in your immediate family. If someone is missing, you notice it."
Loyal has lost so much these past few years, a father who was a pillar in the community, a son whose life was ahead of him.
But Loyal is still loyal. High school kids continue to dream of joining the military. Three students from the Class of 2008 plan to enlist after graduation.
They're just boys. But Meyer is sure these boys will grow to men. They'll return from boot camp to walk the hallways, just as Josh Schmitz once did.
"It's an amazing thing," she says. "You're at war and those kids sign up, against logic, when you think about it. They're going to go for it."
Ben Poston of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report
Ellie
In the central Wisconsin city of Loyal, two men who died answering their country's call are honored as heroes. Esteem is less secure for the war in which they fell.
By BILL GLAUBER
bglauber@journalsentinel.com
Posted: March 15, 2008
First of three parts
Loyal - Coni Meyer lives with her husband in the old bank building on the quiet main street of this old farm town in the middle of Wisconsin.
She's 50, works in the main office at Loyal High School and probably knows every teenager, parent and even most of the grandparents who still call this special, peaceful place home.
"There's a quote that a small town is like a big family, and that is so true," she says. "All you have to do is to be here during a tragedy, watch the flow at the funeral home. It's unbelievable."
Tragedy has come to Loyal these past five years, just as it has come to other small towns and rural places across America, where service to country still leads men and women to fight America's wars, even a war as politically contentious as the one now taking place in Iraq.
Loyal supports its soldiers and honors its war dead even as it quietly assesses a war launched five years ago this week, a war still without end.
There can be no other way to talk of this war in a place such as this.
Two men of Loyal and its surrounding communities died in Iraq.
"How do you overcome evil?" Meyer says. "Good people die for a cause that is worthwhile. That is not easy."
Meyer has a niece named Nancy Olson.
Four years ago, Nancy's husband, Todd, a member of the Wisconsin National Guard, packed his duffel bag and went off to fight in Iraq. On Dec. 26, 2004, a day no one around here will forget, word filtered back to Loyal that Staff Sgt. Todd Olson, 36, father of four, vice president at a local bank, youth football coach, was grievously wounded on a foot patrol in the dusty, battered city of Samarra in Iraq. He died of his injuries.
Loyal's residents made their way to the funeral home, brought casseroles and desserts to a potluck supper for the grieving family and then packed the high school gym and the school hallways for a public memorial.
"It was very holy in the gym," Meyer says. "It was silent. It was full."
On a cold January day, after a service for family and close friends, Todd Olson was laid to rest in the snow-covered earth at the Lutheran cemetery.
Meyer teaches confirmation class at St. Anthony Catholic Church, a sturdy brick building atop a little slope where parishioners gather to pray, renew faith, strengthen a community that has stuck together through seasons good and bad, through wars.
One of her confirmation students was a kid named Josh Schmitz, a football player and drummer who lived outside the city limits but attended Loyal schools. He wanted nothing more than to grow up and be a Marine. He fulfilled his dream, came home on leave after basic training and proudly wore his Marine dress uniform as his boot heels clicked in the hallways at Loyal High School. Coni Meyer remembers that day so well, for she kept his dress hat in a safe place, in the school office.
On Dec. 26, 2006, awful news flickered through the town again like Morse code along an old telegraph wire. Marine Cpl. Josh Schmitz, 21, was killed in combat in Iraq. He left behind grief-stricken parents and siblings.
Once again, residents gathered to honor, pray and bury one of their own, in snow-covered ground at the Catholic cemetery on the town's outskirts.
"We have a hole in our heart," Coni Meyer says.
Two different worlds
Even now, five years after U.S. warplanes and missiles thundered through night skies above Baghdad and military forces rolled through the desert, it is difficult to bridge the space between Loyal and Iraq.
Here is a city of four bars, three churches, three gas stations, two feed mills, two banks, a bowling alley, grocery store, modest homes and 1,290 people. The community is served by two full-time police officers, 28 volunteers in the Fire Department, 12 volunteers on the ambulance crew, a mayor and six city council members.
Through its schools, Loyal is tethered to another 3,000 people who live in surrounding townships and communities that dot the rolling farmland. Some of the old farms are now owned by Old Order Amish families who ride the back roads in horse-drawn buggies painted black.
Over there, in Iraq, is an expanse of desert, cluttered, broken cities, a society that continues a fitful and violent emergence from dictatorship, all while under the occupation and protection of U.S. forces.
It is so peaceful in one place, often so bloody in another.
In Loyal, people such as Meyer provide the mortar that holds together the structure of the community.
She's efficient, warm, organized - opinionated, too, with short, light brown hair, a soft voice and a calm presence behind the big desk in the main office at Loyal High School, where she is an assistant to the principal.
"We're not a military town," she says.
Not officially, anyway. But a pride in the military, and military service, runs through Loyal's history, pumps through its veins.
The place took its name from Civil War veterans who returned to their farms, shops and mills, men who proclaimed they were loyal to the Union.
That loyalty is tacked to a large plaque at American Legion Post 175, more than 700 tiny pieces of wood emblazoned with the names of those from the area who served in America's armed forces, from the War of 1812 through Desert Storm.
The 1920 Loyal High School yearbook "The Reaper" included a dedication poem "To Our Soldiers." The poem began:
"They left their homes behind them,
And bade their friends goodbye;
They gave their all to Uncle Sam
Ready to dare and die"
Near the high school lies Loyal Veterans Memorial Park, created five years ago by school kids moved by stories of sacrifice by the veterans in their city. A late winter wind leaves flags flapping, teases a song from chimes. The names of scores of the area's veterans are engraved in stones on a walkway. "All Gave Some, Some Gave All" are words inscribed on matching marble benches.
Signs hang in downtown storefronts:
"Gone, But Not Forgotten. Josh Schmitz. Todd Olson."
There is not one anti-war sign in the city.
"It isn't going to help a grieving family if you're angry," Meyer says.
Olson's parents and siblings still live in and around Loyal. So do two of his sons, his daughter and his widow, Nancy Olson. Josh Schmitz's siblings attend Loyal schools, and his father oversees a thriving furniture business outside of town that produced the bookshelves and front desk at the local library.
A handful of local soldiers currently serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Judging the costs of war
People don't often talk publicly of the war, but privately, they consider the war's costs in lives and money against the benefits that may have come to Iraq.
There is local opposition to the war, according to a survey the Journal Sentinel recently conducted. The unscientific poll drew responses from 224 people who said they resided in Loyal.
Two-thirds of those who chose to answer the survey said they opposed the U.S. war in Iraq. Just more than half of those who responded to the survey said the U.S. should begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within a year, and one-fifth favored an immediate withdrawal.
Listen to the voices:
"We need to decide how we leave this to Iraq," says Gary R. Weirauch, 61, chairman of the board of Citizens State Bank, past commander of the local Legion post and a resident of nearby Neillsville. "We need to have them make decisions on their own. They've got to rebuild their infrastructure, their roads and their utilities."
"I support the military," says Dan McNeely, 53, who owns an insurance agency. "I want them to finish the job."
"I'm not sure where it is getting us, the money being spent, the lives we're losing," says Judy Bobrofsky, 60, the chief librarian at the Loyal library.
Nancy Olson, 39, says opinion in Loyal reflects the national mood.
"They feel it has been dragging on too long," she says. "Everyone wants a quick fix. But you know, everyone forgets what Germany was like after World War II. Things don't change overnight."
There's no forgetting the war in the Olson household. An American flag is painted on one wall in the home's basement, and Todd Olson's medals are displayed in a cabinet. There's a stuffed bear, sewn from one of Todd Olson's Army fatigues.
This year, Nancy Olson moved to Rhinelander to take a job at a Bible camp. The job fell through, but she still spends weekdays in Rhinelander with her daughter, Kasey, 9, who attends school there. But on weekends, mother and daughter return to the comfort of Loyal, to a home that sits kitty-corner from where Todd Olson's parents live.
Jesse Olson, 19, is the spitting image of his dad, a big man, a strong chin. He grapples with the war.
"As soon as it happened, I hated the war," he says of his father's death. "When I thought about it, I decided it's wrong to pull out now, after we've come so far. For a while, nothing seemed good. There were shootings and bombings left and right.
"Things are starting to come together. Just to pull out. . . what are all these deaths for?"
It is a painful question in a small city struggling with loss.
In the main office at the local high school, Meyer talks of the death of two soldiers. She begins to cry.
"There is still that hole," she says. "You can have 100 people who are in your immediate family. If someone is missing, you notice it."
Loyal has lost so much these past few years, a father who was a pillar in the community, a son whose life was ahead of him.
But Loyal is still loyal. High school kids continue to dream of joining the military. Three students from the Class of 2008 plan to enlist after graduation.
They're just boys. But Meyer is sure these boys will grow to men. They'll return from boot camp to walk the hallways, just as Josh Schmitz once did.
"It's an amazing thing," she says. "You're at war and those kids sign up, against logic, when you think about it. They're going to go for it."
Ben Poston of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report
Ellie