By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

WITHAMSVILLE - Iraq is not a faraway place when you have a loved one there, wearing a uniform of the United States military.

Iraq is at the kitchen table and in the TV room every day for six Clermont County people - five women and a man - who make up the new Clermont County Military Support Group.

At their first meeting Monday, the six, all of whom have close relatives serving in the military, sit around a table in the children's Sunday school room of Mount Moriah United Methodist Church, talking about what is happening in Iraq.

They are, in many ways, no different than you or your neighbors. They watch television images of bombed-out buildings in Baghdad, the twisted wreckage of American military vehicles struck by rocket-propelled grenades. They hear the reports of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded. Like most Americans, they wonder how long it will go on.

And they pray the day won't come that a military officer in dress uniform walks slowly to their front door.

"It is not an easy thing to deal with, to know every day that your son is in danger,'' says Karen Flinn of Glen Este.

Flinn's 32-year-old son, Christopher, is a private in the 1st Armored Division, living in a crowded tent two miles from the center of Baghdad. "But you get through the day. You have no choice.''

Flinn and her friend, Mia Supe of Summerside, have come to the meeting to help the four others form a support group for Clermont County military parents.

Supe's brother, Sgt. 1st Class Bobby Elliott, heads a platoon of the Army's Task Force Iron Horse in Iraq. His outfit almost daily hears shots fired in anger, even now, six months after President Bush declared the major fighting to be over.

The two women also are members of a military support group that meets each month in Blue Ash and, between the two of them, have organized "care package'' and letter-writing campaigns that have meant that hundreds of soldiers in Iraq heard their names called out at mail call.

"You'll find that this is a whole lot easier to deal with if you keep busy,'' Supe tells the others. "And the best way to keep busy is to do something to help those guys over there.''

The four friends who started the Clermont support group - David Stultz of Mount Carmel, Carolyn Maupin of Willowville, Jan Rolland of Withamsville and Chris Pez of Glen Este - are hoping to turn it into a place where military parents can come to talk about their children and comfort each other.

Stultz's 20-year-old son, Christopher, is a specialist in the 82nd Airborne Division. He was a standout wrestler and football player at Glen Este High School who returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan earlier this year only to turn around this summer and be shipped out to Iraq.

Maupin's sons - Keith, a 20-year-old Army reservist, and Kent, an 18-year-old Marine, fresh out of boot camp - are still stateside. Pez, too, has two sons in the Army, both in the 10th Mountain Division - 21-year-old Jake, who is at Fort Drum in upstate New York and 19-year-old Nick, serving in Afghanistan.

Rolland is a bus driver for the West Clermont School District. Her son joined the Army fresh out of high school this summer. Sunday, he is scheduled to leave Fort Hood, Texas, for Iraq.

"I don't know if I can handle this or not,'' says Rolland. "He is so young. They are all so young. I don't know if he is ready. I don't know if he has had the right training. I just don't know.''

She sees the high school kids she drives to school each morning, some of them rowdy, some of them immature; and she just wants to yell at them - My son is barely older than you are. He's putting his life on the line. What's the matter with you?

The others reassure her, convince her that giving in to fear and anxiety doesn't accomplish a thing.

"It never gets easy, Jan; it just doesn't,'' says Stultz. "But you have to convince yourself that he is going to be OK. He is a soldier; he is well-trained; he is part of the greatest army that has ever existed on the face of the earth."

Join the group

Clermont Countians interested in joining the military support group or helping with their "care package'' project can e-mail Carolyn Maupin at kmmaupin52@aol.com

---

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com