Sgt. Frank J. Atwood, 38, with the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Aviation Brigade, has been deployed to Iraq since October. He recently received word of a 90-day extension. Mrs. Atwood winces as she recalls how she first got word of the disappointing news.
“We don’t get Christmas together again,” said Mrs. Atwood. “This will be our third Christmas apart. Every holiday is like a knife in the heart with Frank gone.”
She said when her husband is home, a career as an Army wife is fantastic. When he’s deployed, it’s not so great. Most women married to soldiers feel that way, she said.
The couple bought a home in Temple in September before Atwood was deployed. When it came time for him to leave, she said they installed an electronic security system in the house. Two vigilant watch dogs patrol for security outdoors.
She said she felt safe and secure with her three-year-old son, Quinn, ensconced in their native stone home with its trendy interior décor and spacious floor plan. But as soon as Atwood left to go halfway around the world, many unforeseen predicaments magically popped up that she had to deal with, Mrs. Atwood said, laughing softly.
She said when her husband is home, he’s responsible for anything outdoors. He takes care of dealing with the yardman. But after he deployed, all that went to pieces.
“I had so much trouble with the yard guy,” she said. “He wouldn’t show up. Then one day I called because he hadn’t come on schedule and his wife says, ‘You must not read the paper. He got put in jail.’ Seems he was arrested for DWI. Just my luck!”
She said when they bought the house, they went all digital with phone, TV and Internet.
“But since Frank’s been gone, it’s been nothing but problems with the cable,” she said. “The phone will shut off right in the middle of a conversation. This has happened many times when I’ve been talking to him in Iraq.” She said she will go to her computer to email Atwood and can’t get online.
“It’s just out. I’m totally impaired. I can’t get Frank by phone and I can’t talk to him on the Internet and I can’t even get the news of what’s happening in Iraq on TV because the system is always down.
She said in nine months she’s made five calls to the cable company and they’ve sent five technicians who couldn’t find a problem. Then on the sixth call, a tech told her she had a temporary line.
“‘It’s why you have all the problems,’” she said the man told her. “I asked when they could put a permanent line in. He scheduled it for May 14. We shall see.”
Then there was the day the tree fell on the house. That was in April after a record snowfall took down trees all over Bell County. She said it made a hole in her roof, exposing the attic. It had to be completely replaced. But when the tree surgeon’s crew began throwing logs down to the ground, one hit the gas lamppost by her outdoor barbeque pit.
“I called the gas company right away - even though it wasn’t’ leaking gas yet,” she said. “They sent a man out who was more interested in my hot water heater than the potential danger of a ruptured line in the backyard.”
She said he told her that her hot water tank was improperly vented and he tagged it for repair and shut off the gas. This was in cold weather.
“I told him we bought the house just nine months ago and it passed home inspection, but that didn’t impress him,” she said. “So now I’m without hot water with a three-year-old in the house until I can get a plumber out.”
She said that was followed by rains filling the back yard with water because of a drainage problem.
“I called a landscaper and he promised to come out but didn’t,” said Mrs. Atwood. “My dad ended up digging a trench that drained it.”
Valentine’s Day turned into a disaster for Mrs. Atwood. She said her husband asked her father to arrange with a local florist to send a spray of flowers and Valentine’s card. But she said they never arrived.
“My dad called several times and they couldn’t explain how it happened,” she said. “I never got the flowers. It still appeared on his credit card bill.”
Mrs. Atwood has learned that she must make many unilateral decisions while her husband is away - at times without contact.
“One of the toughest things is not being able to make decisions that only a couple should make together,” Mrs. Atwood said “I would like to buy some shrubs and landscape the front yard or build a wood deck for the backyard. But I don’t want to do it without Frank to share in how it will look. That’s what couples do together.”
Is there an upside to any of this?
The FRG (Family Readiness Group) is a lifesaver, she said. It operates in the spirit of the Army family concept. It makes things do-able. She said she went to Killeen recently to help another Army wife move from one residence to another.
“She was pregnant and had no business moving heavy things and her husband is deployed,” said Mrs. Atwood. She said she called her contacts in the family readiness group (FRG). They asked some off-duty soldiers to help.
“They didn’t do this because they had to or were told to do it,” she said. “They wanted to help out and were so genuine about it.”
Mrs. Atwood said she was reminded of something that happened when her husband was still home. They were leaving a store in Killeen when they heard an Army private in uniform out on the sidewalk talking on his cell phone. He had just bought a twin bed and he didn’t have a car. He was calling cab companies to see who would pick him up.
“I told Frank, ‘You’ve got to help him.’ And he did.” Atwood told the soldier to cancel the cab. He put the bed in the back of his pickup truck and drove the soldier home to help him unload it.
“It’s a family,” she said. “It’s the Army family. When you can help, you help.”
hclark@temple-telegram.com
