Drs. Habte, Garrison, et al.,
The following NYT article put a face on this war that I've somehow ceased to consider in the past couple of weeks. I think we must be incredibly vigilant, whether we "support the war" or not, to not let it become our arm-chair entertainment. It is easily done when all the graphics are so neat. I think we've also, the lot of us, been conditioned by Hollywood to enjoy the boom-boom movies that make war into a romantic event. But this article halted me in my tracks and made me think about the people, both States-side and in Iraq, who are suffering because of this war. And it also further concreted in my mind that we ought to support our troops regardless of our feelings toward the conflict that they are sent into. Anyway, here's the article:
"Wartime Grief at Wal-Mart"
April 4, 2003
By CONSTANCE L. HAYS
It is springtime, and so all the Wal-Marts around the
country have plastic flowers in the crafts aisle and
chocolate eggs in the candy section. But it is also
wartime, and at Wal-Mart, which sometimes functions in its
vastness as a kind of substitute town square, the impact of
the war in Iraq is on display around the clock.
At the store in Jacksonville, N.C., near Camp Lejeune,
practically all the employees and customers are related to
someone in the Marines. On Tuesday night, a woman and her
sister went in to buy suitcases and tote bags. They were at
the checkout a little longer than usual. A conversation
began, said Tena Stallings, one of the managers, ``and then
one of the women burst into tears and said she had just
lost her husband'' in Iraq.
She needed the luggage because now she had no reason to be
in Jacksonville; it was time to pack up and move away. Not
only did the cashier in her lane, whose son is a Marine
sent to the battlefront, begin to cry, but so did all the
other cashiers. ``They've all got sons and husbands and
brothers that they haven't heard from,'' Ms. Stallings
said. ``It was just like a ripple effect.''
For Wal-Mart, the country's biggest company and employer of
more people than any entity except the government, only
something like a war could force the kinds of changes it
has made since the fighting began. Computers normally used
for gift registry now send e-mail greetings to the
military. On the internal Wal-Mart television network, the
usual loop of giddy promotions for Mary Kate and Ashley
apparel, garden tools and DVD's is interrupted twice a day
for live briefings from the White House and the Pentagon.
Ms. Stallings spends her days and nights on an emotional
shore patrol, up and down the aisles of her store, a
200,000-square-foot ``supercenter'' that sells everything
from baby clothes to Bloody Mary mix. She and her
co-manager, Terry Branton, seek out the unusually quiet,
the drawn-looking and the people who are openly in tears -
mostly their employees, sometimes their customers, too.
They console them as best they can.
There are two stages of major upset: first, when e-mail
messages and phone calls are cut off because a military
unit is heading into combat, and again when reports of
casualties come in and mention a military unit stationed
nearby. But people inside the Wal-Marts seem to share more
general fears, as well: about their children, and about the
future.
The war's effect is most noticeable at stores near huge
military installations, the communities where workers and
shoppers alike are preoccupied with the day-to-day details
of the war. For managers at these stores - people like
Gentle S. Raines Sr., running a Wal-Mart nine miles from
the Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville, Fla.; and Ms.
Stallings, in charge of her store at a time when her
ex-husband, Gunnery Sgt. Timothy Rose, the father of her
two girls, has been sent to the Persian Gulf - sensitivity
is in order as they shepherd workers through problems
larger than any they have had to handle before.
``We are concerned about how our associates are going to
take any situation, although we will be ready to support
them,'' said Wally Davidson, manager of the Wal-Mart in
Hinesville, Ga., where about 20 percent of the 575
employees have spouses in the Army; Fort Stewart, home of
the Army's Third Infantry Division, is nearby.
Four soldiers from Fort Stewart were killed by a suicide
bomber near Najaf on March 29, and some of the workers at
the Wal-Mart knew them. On Monday, one worker began holding
support-group sessions that she organized. ``Right now we
don't know what the future will hold,'' Mr. Davidson said,
``but right now everybody is being strong.''
At a Wal-Mart in the Ashford Dunwoody section of Atlanta,
an employee named Tekla Walker got the worst possible news
early in the fighting. Her husband, Jamaal R. Addison, 22,
a specialist in the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance
Company, died March 23 when his unit was ambushed south of
Nasiriya.
``She's off right now,'' said Mike Caspar, the area's
district manager. ``We stay in touch with her on a daily
basis, and a lot of the associates, when they get off work,
go over and try and comfort her.'' The couple have three
young children, he added.
The stores' break rooms have become repositories for
sorrow, the places where Wal-Mart workers go to cope
privately. None of the store managers interviewed said they
had brought in extra grief counselors or other specialists.
``Fortunately, the military has very good counseling
services,'' Mr. Branton said.
Although full-time employees can call a counseling line for
help as part of their benefits, others tend to rely on
their friends at work. And they seem to have time for this.
``Business has nose-dived,'' said a customer-service
manager at the Wal-Mart in St. Mary's, Ga., near the Navy's
Kings Bay submarine base.
In the break room one recent afternoon, Nancy Weirup sat
writing a letter to her 20-year-old son, a Marine stationed
in Kuwait, on a pink legal pad bought at Wal-Mart. A few
days earlier, cashiers had sobbed around the same table
after being overwhelmed by the constant blare of coverage
from the Wal-Mart TV monitors, which ran nonstop for the
first 48 hours of the war.
Absent spouses mean logistical adjustments, as well. Some
workers are not able to show up for the night shift
anymore, Mr. Branton said; with husbands or wives gone,
they have no one to watch their children and no means of
paying for a baby sitter. So schedules have been altered
where possible, he said, and about 25 employees have taken
leaves of absence. Their jobs will be held for them until
they return, he added.
Mr. Raines, 54, feels the echo of worry from inside his
store, which opened in January. Many of the 580 employees,
whom Wal-Mart prefers to call associates, are wearing
yellow ribbons to work. One, Cha Chi, used her own time to
make them, and the store donated the ribbon. ``You can
always tell the military people, the moms, the kids,'' she
said. ``They are very upset right now.''
Mr. Raines set up ``thank you books'' for customers to
sign, with their personal messages for soldiers and others,
at the front of the store. He also ordered a bouquet of
red, white and blue balloons tied to the booth where people
can send e-mail messages to soldiers. The messages are
delivered by OperationDearAbby.net, a Defense Department
Web site, and a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said 150,000 had been
sent so far.
The son of a World War I Army veteran, Mr. Raines says he
thinks constantly about the war. ``Like everybody else, I
want it to end very soon for all parties involved - the
Iraqi citizens as well as U.S. soldiers,'' he said. ``It's
something that is very disturbing for all of us.''
In the beginning, someone at Wal-Mart headquarters decided
that it would be a good idea to broadcast war coverage, via
CNN, into its stores around the clock. The monitors, which
exist mainly to advertise Wal-Mart wares, are everywhere,
from the front of the stores to the infant, sporting goods,
electronics and grocery sections.
The round-the-clock coverage was not well received at
stores where the American forces represented real people,
not just images on a screen. Under Wal-Mart policy, stores
are not allowed to turn the monitors off, and because it is
a closed system, they cannot change the channel to
something else. Before long, Ms. Stallings was on the phone
to Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., asking the
Wal-Mart brass to do something about the broadcasts. By
March 22, the format was scaled back nationwide to include
only the two daily briefings.
Ms. Stallings and Mr. Branton were relieved. With everyone
in their store keenly aware of relatives' unit and division
designations, they all shared what Mr. Branton called
``that fear of finding out.'' He added, ``And you certainly
don't want to find out on the TV.''
Other touches seem to have hit the right note. The store
near Camp Lejeune put up a ``wall of heroes,'' an unusual
addition to the standard-issue Wal-Mart layout. It is
filled with photographs of individual Marines and in some
cases, entire units, placed there by relatives who shop or
work at that store. Many workers also have pictures of
their husbands or wives stationed in the gulf pinned to
their smocks, Ms. Stallings said, alongside the name tags
adorned with smiley faces, a Wal-Mart staple.
``We've just got a huge military family in this store,''
said Ms. Stallings. ``It's on my mind, personally and
professionally. I know what they're going through. We're
each other's biggest support group.''
Some stores have organized collections of food, toiletries,
clothing and other items for the troops and their families
left back home. In Atlanta, contributions gathered with the
help of a radio appeal filled four 18-wheel
tractor-trailers, Mr. Caspar said, and included bottles of
Listerine and boxes of Girl Scout cookies, on which donors
scribbled messages like ``Thanks for keeping us free.''
The supplies were delivered last Saturday to Fort Benning,
near Columbus, Ga., where many Army infantry soldiers were
posted before leaving for Iraq. Mr. Caspar said the
families seemed overjoyed, to the point of tears. ``They
just couldn't believe the outpouring of support from people
they didn't even know,'' he said.
Back at the stores, the talk of war continues, and
employees get through their shifts hoping for the best. Mr.
Branton, 36, said he had some experience with his
employees' feelings: his father spent 25 years in the
military, including lengthy tours in Vietnam. ``So I was a
little boy on the front steps waiting for Daddy to come
home a couple of times,'' he said. His store is decorated
for Easter, he added, and planning to conduct business as
usual.
``We have to carry on,'' he said. ``That's important for
our whole nation. That's one of the things that makes
America America.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/04/international/worldspecial/04SHOP.html?ex=1050463835&ei=1&en=b6c3d40ce6f7af64
--
Tyson Land
Library Associate II
Supervisor of Students,
Third Floor Stacks Maintenance
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Lupton Library - Access Services Department
Dept 6456
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga, TN 37403-2598
Voice: (423) 425-4501
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"There is no outward sign of true courtesy
that does not rest on a deep moral foundation."
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