Connie Ramsey
RE 3240-104
Instructor-Nora Vines
Military Families
Military families are families in which one or both of the parents are currently serving, or have in the past served, in one branch of the military. These branches include the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and National Guard. The men and women who serve our country put their lives on the line daily in order to ensure that we, as Americans, have the freedoms that we enjoy. Many of our military personal have children who are left at home while they are deployed and even though many people don’t think about the effects their parents’ career has on these children it can sometimes be very detrimental to the children and spouse left at home. Many of the men and women who serve in wars and conflicts are wounded, whether it is physically of psychologically, and this can change not only their life but the lives of their entire family forever. The main text in the military family book set is Back Home by Julia Keller which was written in 2009. The set also includes the books Moving Again Mom, When Duty Calls, A Year without Dad, Pilot Mom, and The Impossible Patriotism Project. All of these books help bring to life the situations that military families are faced with daily, and especially during times of deployment.
In the novel Back Home by Julia Keller, a military family has to face the inevitable. The father in the family was sent to Iraq with his National Guard unit. The family had begun to adjust to the fact that dad wasn’t at home anymore when they receive the news that would forever change their lives. This was the news that their mother shared with them,
“Guys, your dad and some other soldiers were in a terrible fight over there and there was a big explosion and some people were killed but your dad wasn’t killed- he’s alive, he lived through it- and he’s going to be coming home…When dad comes home,” my mother went on, “he’s going to be different okay? He was hurt really, really bad…”
(Keller, 9-10).
As the book progressed I learned that the children suffer due to the life change that has occurred with their father. Their father had lost one arm, one leg, and his brain was traumatically injured. From this book I learned that life was totally changed for everyone in the family once their father returned home. The children’s friends pulled away from them because they didn’t know what to say and they couldn’t come over because they were too noisy and bothered Mr. Browning. The older two children felt that they had to face this difficult time all alone. I learned that there are support groups to help families deal with the changes that traumatic injury can bring upon them but many times these sessions are not helpful at all. I also learned that the fact that Mr. Browning had to be cared for continuously put a great stress on Mrs. Browning because she couldn’t care for him and the children in the way that she needed to. This shows that sometimes when tragedy strikes a military parent, the other parent is left to take care of everything. This puts so much stress upon them that sometimes it is more than they can take and something has to give. The injuries such as the ones that Mr. Browning suffered can sometimes change the entire personality of the injured person and make them into someone hostile and mean that they really are not. In the supplementary book Pilot Mom I was shown how hard it is for children to live their daily lives when they know that at any time they may receive news that they will never get to see their parent again. As in The Impossible Patriotism Project some children also feel like they don’t have the parent support and help they need to get through everyday life and especially hard times because he/she is serving the country and this can make the child feel hostile or proud, but either way they still miss having their parent at home to be there for them. In the text A Year without Dad, Ryan, the son in the family, wants to be just like his dad when he grows up. His dad makes him so proud that he wants to give his dad the same reason to be proud of him when he is old enough to join the armed forces of the United States. However, in Pilot Mom, Jenny is proud of her mom, but she feels so much stress from worrying about her mother’s safety that she informs her mother that when she is older she doesn’t want to be in the Air Force. She just wants to be a mom because to her that is the most important job that her mother has. The family in Moving Again Mom and When Duty Calls are supported by the other military families that they live on the military base with. This is a huge comfort to the family because they know that everyone who lives around them is dealing with somewhat the same issues that they are faced with. The community also rallies around this family and the others to ensure that the soldiers feel the support of the people left at home and that the families who are still at home are okay and making it through the time of separation from their loved one. In When Duty Calls, Nick, the only son in the family, is in Uncle Sam’s Kids which is a club for the children of military families. Nick’s troop 109 is challenged to come up with something they can do for the men and women who are serving overseas. The club comes up with care sacks which they fill with gifts that would remind the soldier of home and sent them across the ocean to whatever country the troops are stationed in. This helped me to see the importance of community involvement and the involvement of school children in the lives of our military personnel. The soldiers greatly appreciated everything that was sent to them because it was like receiving a piece of home every time he/she opened a package.
The author of Back Home, Julia Keller, takes the reader into the culture of a military family from the very beginning of the book by referring to the fort by saying that, “It’s a place you can go when you don’t have anywhere else to go. A place where there won’t be a lot of questions. A place where people won’t be looking at you or making judgments… A fort is all about protection” (Keller, 1). Rachel and her father had built a fort in their back-yard when she was a young girl before he had been sent to Iraq. This was a safe haven for Rachel just like a fort in the military is a place of safety for the troops. Most children want a playhouse or a tree house but in the life of a soldier’s daughter a fort was the best thing she could wish for. After Mr. Browning comes home, the author puts us in the culture of the military family be describing how cold and lonely the house seems to be. No more are their children playing and laughing. Now the only sounds that come from the house are that of sorrow and pain. Mr. Browning would grunt and scream out if something bothered him because it was the only way that he could communicate and get his point across. A friend of Mr. Browning who was in his National Guard unit, Nelson Guthridge, came to visit the family after Mr. Browning had been home a few months and he sat there telling them what had happened during their father’s accident. This brought the whole horrible accident to life, because up until this point no one would tell the family what exactly had happened during the roadside bombing. By giving the reader evidence of what really happened to their father and husband this puts the reader into the accident allowing them to feel the pain of the family. At the end of the book Mrs. Browning finally decided that the best thing for the entire family is to put her husband in a home for people with traumatic brain injuries so that he can be well cared for and she can focus on raising their three children. Mr. Browning and the rest of the family seem to be happy with this arrangement and this is the final point where the author pulls the reader into the final changes of the family and the fact that maybe their lives will get back to being more normal even though they will never be the way they were before Mr. Browning was sent to Iraq.
From the auxiliary text Moving Again Mom, the author takes the reader into the culture by allowing the reader to travel along the journey the family makes from their current home on the east coast to their new home base which is in California. I was shown that many of the families have to move quite frequently due to the fact that the family member in the military can be relocated to a new base at any time. This was very hard for Lil’M the smallest child in the family to accept. She didn’t want to leave her best friend and move across the country because she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to make any new friends in the place that they were moving to. By showing the feelings that this child is going through it helps to make the story more relatable to children and helps them to be pulled into the military family culture. I didn’t realize before reading this text that military children have to move so many times throughout their childhood. This is a life changing experience and if military children have to move a lot in their lifetime it could be very hard for them to make close friends. By allowing the reader to travel the entire journey with the military family I believe that it helps to pull us into the culture and bring to life right before our eyes.
These books greatly impacted my understanding and feelings toward the culture of military families. I know for a fact that since no one in my immediate family has served in the military during my lifetime I didn’t have the respect for this subculture of people that they deserve. I have always appreciated all that soldiers do for use to keep the U.S. safe and free, but I have never taken time to consider the effects that it has on the families back home and the men and women who are injured in battle. When we study about war in history class we are told the number of deaths and injuries during the conflicts, but I think that I have become numb to these huge numbers and have not taken the time to think that this is someone’s life that is taken away from them for my safety and freedom. I also hadn’t thought about the effect that a parent being deployed overseas could have on their children back home. I know that as a child, if either one of my parents had been gone for long periods of time I would have a really hard time dealing with it. The books in this culture set about military families and the lives that they live have greatly opened my eyes to see what life really is like for the service men and women and their families. I feel that reading about the lives of these children and their parents will help me as I start teaching in a classroom to understand my students who have parents in the military much better and allow me to understand that they may have bad days because of something that is going on at home. These books have been very helpful to me as a future teacher to be able to open my eyes to the world around me. Military service men and women, as well as their families, have to deal with many things that I couldn’t even imagine going through myself. The fact that families have to pack up and move whenever they are instructed to is something that would be very hard for me to do. I have lived in the same house my entire life and the thought of moving every couple of years is devastating to me. Moving doesn’t just consist of packing up your things; it is like starting a new life for oneself and his/her entire family. New friends, new school, new everything. This in itself is a huge sacrifice that military families make on a regular basis that I have never even thought of before. The only question I have after reading these books is why more of the texts didn’t promote community involvement in supporting the military families. This is something that I feel should be greatly promoted, and in my classroom we will focus on helping others and giving back to those who help give us freedom every day.
I think that older elementary school children would respond very well to the novel because it shows us more than just the proud, brave solider that we all picture in our minds as children. This helps us to greater appreciate the risk that these men and women do take daily in order to ensure that we are safe and are able to live in the “land of the free and the home of the brave” (Key). As children grow and mature I feel that it is important that we share with them the sacrifices these families make so that they will know how much freedom really costs and form a greater appreciation for military men and women than I had as a child. This book could be tied to fifth grade social studies Essential Standards 5.C&G.2.1: Understand the values and principles of a democratic republic.5.C&G.2.2 Analyze the rights and responsibilities of United States citizens in relation to the concept of "common good" according to the United States Constitution (Bill of Rights). 5.C&G.2.35. C&G.2 Analyze life in a democratic republic through rights and responsibilities of citizens. 5.C &G.2.4 Explain why civic participation is important in the United States. All of these standards could tie into how men and women who serve in the military are doing their civil duty by protecting the rest of the country. We could also discuss the fact that we are a democratic society and without the freedom that our military personnel help to provide for us we would not have a say or be allowed to make choices in the government the way that we do today. It is very important that my students understand that freedom doesn’t come free and that they show their appreciation to the ones who protect our freedoms because not every day is a bed of roses for them. I’m sure that these families get worn down and depressed seeing all of the horrible things that are happening around them. My uncle served in the Vietnam War and to this day he still tears up when he talks about one of his best friends getting killed while fighting to protect our freedoms.
The other books in this unit are picture books and one very short chapter book. I believe that these would be more relatable to children in the lower elementary grades. These books could relate to Essential Standards 2.C&G.2 Understand the roles and responsibilities of citizens. 2.C &G.2.2 Explain why it is important for citizens to participate in their community. I could talk to my students about how soldiers and people in the military serve our community and what an important part of the community they are because they serve and protect us. This would be a great way to get my students thinking about how important military families are to our society. As a class we could put a care package together and send to someone that one of the students knew in the military or write cards to them just like the children did in the book When Duty Calls. This would be a great way to allow the students to show their appreciation to the military men and women and show them that they can be active citizens even at a very young age. By practicing the things that we learn in the classroom I feel that my students in the future will be more likely to step up to the plate and be a caring and productive community citizen that would make me and every other American proud as they grow into adults themselves.
Military families sometimes seem to be forgotten about as we sometimes forget the fact that they are sacrificing many things to help ensure that America continues to be the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”(Key). By reading this book set, my eyes have been opened to the struggles that these people are faced with daily. It has greatly changed my attitude toward military personnel and their families and given me a greater respect for each and every one of them. In my classroom knowing about these books and being able to use them as a resource will be very helpful in sharing what I have learned about military families with my students someday and hopefully give them the opportunity to show their support to the men and women who are currently active or are retired members of the military.
Work Cited
Brunson, Jodi, and Cramer. A Year Without Dad. Dryden, N.Y.: Ithaca Press, 2003. Print.
Duble, Kathleen B, and Alan Marks. Pilot Mom. Watertown, Mass: Charlesbridge, 2003. Print.
Keller, Julia. Back Home. New York: Egmont USA, 2009. Print.
Key, Francis S. “The Star Spangled Banner.” 1814.
Skeers, Linda, and Ard Hoyt. The Impossible Patriotism Project. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2007. Print.
Sportelli-Rehak, Angela, and Gregg Hinlicky. Moving Again Mom. Island Heights, N.J: Abidenme Books, 2004. Print.
Sportelli-Rehak, Angela, and Gregg Hinlicky. When Duty Calls. Island Heights, N.J: Abidenme Books, 2002. Print.
