Children face emotional battles when parent is away at war

The Brothers Grimm would have called the Sisters Casperson “The Beautiful,” “The Fiery” and “The Good.” Like princesses of old, the three small Grants Pass, Ore., girls wait for their father’s return from war. He’s been away to Iraq and Afghanistan “a really long time, like five years,” says Alexandria the Good, 10. “Like 10 years.”

“He is this tall,” says Brianna the Beautiful, 6, as she stands on the back of her mother’s couch reaching high as the sky. “He has a red mustache and brownish hair.” She frowns.

“Maybe blackish hair.”

Staff Sgt. Glen Casperson is 5-foot-9, with light brown hair.

All this talk of her father sends Victoria the Fiery outside where the 8-year-old flings her tiny body onto the trampoline, leaping higher and higher as if she could just fly away.

After a 16-month deployment to Afghanistan, Sgt. Casperson’s Oregon Army National Guard unit is coming home. But there is no fairy tale ending for the Casperson girls. Like their dad, more than half of those returning from Kabul have served tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and many expect to leave again within two years.

Casperson, who also deployed to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, has been away nearly three years. Social scientists, school counselors and the military are increasingly worried about what that means for children like his.

“We’re seeing people from third and fourth deployments, and that is just harder,” says Patricia Lester, a UCLA psychiatrist who is undertaking a major study on the risks such families face. “We’ve seen that it takes Dad longer to calm down and the family is just worn out. There’s a sense of numbness about the whole thing.”

Though many American parents sweat soccer matches or soda machines at school, counselors say the children of soldiers suffer a level of fear and sadness akin to those who’ve lost a parent to death or divorce.

“These children are not only missing the parent, but they’re also afraid for their safety; it’s a chronic anxiety,” says Sandy Ohlinger, a school counselor in Lacey, Wash., who formed a support group for grade school children of soldiers deployed from nearby Fort Lewis.

The Caspersons e-mailed one another daily; so Alexandria (“horselover”) wrote her “baghdaddy” all the time. But a smiley face is no substitute for the real Glen Casperson.

Alexandria has her father’s arched eyebrows and long toes. “We both like to get dirty,” she says, and “we love animals.” Since he left, she has methodically acquired pets as if so many tiny heartbeats could make up for the one she misses. Among them: three rats, two cats, two bunnies, one puppy and countless guppies, snails and goldfish with names such as “Iraqi,” “Baghdad” and “Double G” – “Greatest Glen.”

“Sometimes I want to cry, but I don’t want people to make fun of me,” Alexandria says, stroking Mocha the rat. “But it’s like sometimes I don’t really have a dad.”

Jennifer Casperson peers through the window of a dance studio as Brianna twirls past in a sea of pink tutus. Glen Casperson was already serving in the National Guard when the couple met and married two weeks before Jennifer’s 17th birthday. “He was pretty hot in his drill uniform,” she says with a laugh. “I was all smitten.”

But even after eight years of marriage and three children, the leap from weekend warrior to frontline infantry was harder than she expected. As Casperson’s infantry battalion lost eight soldiers in Iraq, Jennifer felt isolated, anxious and depressed. “She kept us cooped up all the time because he might call,” says Alexandria.

“I was a complete hermit, my life revolved around the computer and the telephone,” Jennifer Casperson says.

With no military base, Oregon military families are geographically scattered. “I felt so alone,” she explains. “I’d call the Guard and say, ‘Isn’t there anyone around here?’ “

When Casperson volunteered to serve in Afghanistan, his wife knew she had to handle it better. “I grew up,” Jennifer Casperson says. “I learned to live my life.”

Experts say children’s well-being hinges on how well the parents or guardians at home handle their own anxiety.

This time, Casperson formed her own support group with Tanya Wright and Ursula Whisenant, both young Grants Pass mothers whose husbands are Guard soldiers serving with Sgt. Casperson in Afghanistan. The women meet for lunch, help with one another’s children and counsel each other.

She bought a treadmill, lost 35 pounds and found a massage therapist. She enrolled the girls in jazz, tap and ballet classes. For the first time, she took the girls camping with family and took them to the coast by herself. But the kids are still isolated, experts say.

“If you ask military kids what it’s like, they all say, ‘Nobody gets it,’ ” says Meredith Browning, child and youth services coordinator for the Oregon National Guard.

That aloneness is so painful that Ohlinger formed a support group for each grade level at her school.

The Sisters Casperson are the only students in Fruitdale Elementary with a parent in combat. School staff transferred Victoria into a male teacher’s classroom when it became clear that she craved male attention. And when Brianna stopped speaking when her dad returned to Afghanistan after a short leave, the staff had Alexandria help them address her sister’s sadness.

Jennifer Casperson almost didn’t answer the phone late on Sunday, April 29, because she didn’t recognize the number on the Caller ID. It was her husband’s cell, a number she hadn’t seen in a year.

“I’m in Colorado,” Sgt. Casperson said. “I’ve been here 20 minutes.”

Despite high divorce rates among military couples, Jennifer Casperson has faith in the future of her marriage. just mold together,” she says.

After 12 years, the military has given Sgt. Casperson the structure, direction and sense of purpose he craves. And the steady income has provided financial security.

Jennifer Casperson wonders what this reunion will be like. After Iraq and New Orleans, her husband’s back ached, his ears rang and he seemed amped to twice the typical level. And, she says, the girls have changed dramatically since he was last home.

“I feel old,” said Sgt. Casperson, 31, as his unit demobilized at Fort Carson, Colo. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make it up to them. But I really believe I was helping people who don’t have anything: running water, electricity, toilets … anything.

“I just hope some day they’ll understand.”