Being apart will be greatest test
MOSCOW, Idaho — Cindy Airheart won’t let 2-year-old Jade forget her father.
Jade will hear bedtime stories from her dad every night via video recording, talk to him on the telephone regularly and see him wave hello from a Web cam computer feed.
Airheart knows it will be hard when her husband, Pvt. Luke Airheart, 23, reports for active duty next week in Texas with the Idaho National Guard 116th Engineer Battalion, Company B.
But she doesn’t want his absence to affect Jade.
“It’s going to be real hard. I’ll be a single mom. It’ll be just me and Jade dukin’ it out. But I want her to constantly have her Daddy around,” said Airheart, 20. “She’s so young. I want to make sure she knows who Daddy is.”
Her husband leaves Moscow on Monday for Fort Bliss, Texas.
After four months of intensive training, he and his battalion will report to Fort Polk, La., and from there learn if they will be deployed to Iraq.
The group has been told they will not be gone more than a year and a half.
Sgt. Paul Lindquist, of the 116th Battalion, said it is “pretty likely” that the group, made up of 118 people from Moscow, Grangeville and Orofino, will go to Iraq where they will probably work security checkpoints and assist with rebuilding efforts.
Lindquist and the men are prepared for the job.
“Without a doubt, this company is probably the best in the state,” he said.
Luke Airheart first became interested in joining the military when his father told him stories of the Vietnam War.
But it was after Sept. 11, 2001, that he knew he had to enlist.
“I was pretty upset. It was pretty unnerving to see that happen on American soil after I had just had a little girl,” he said.
“I was always going to join, it was just a matter of when. I figured it was my turn to do my duty. If there’s not someone there to do it, who’s going to?”
Cindy Airheart said she understands the military is a career and source of income and schooling for him, but she became apprehensive about his decision to join the Army as the war evolved.
With him leaving later this month, she has grown more fearful.
“I’m worried about him getting hurt or of him having to stay (overseas) longer. I don’t want to admit that there is a big chance that he will go (to Iraq). But I don’t want to worry about it until he leaves,” she said.
“Now I just need to be supportive of him. It’s our only option, so we may as well make the best of it.”
For the Airhearts, who have been married for three years, the separation will be difficult.
“But absence makes the heart grow fonder,” she said. “In the end, I think we’ll just grow stronger.”
Luke Airheart said he is not at all worried about the possibility of his going to Iraq, and he reassures his wife that he will return safely from his work.
“They trained me pretty well. Tax dollars are putting me to work. I’m skilled enough to go over there,” he said. “I feel that it’s safer being over there than driving here in Moscow. I could just as easily be killed here in a car accident.”
His wife and daughter may move to live with Luke’s parents in Mason, Texas — six miles away from Fort Bliss.
On his off-time, the family will be able to spend several days together.
“I think that will help Jade and me, too,” Cindy Airheart said. “We’ll get used to only seeing him now and then.”
Luke Airheart said he will miss family time most — meals and playing with Jade.
He realizes he also will be absent for Easter, Christmas and birthdays.
“It’s going to be really hard while I’m gone,” he said. “Cindy is pretty broken up about it, and I’m pretty broken up about it.”
But he doesn’t have any fears that Jade will forget him.
“When I got back from months of basic training, she picked me out of a crowd and yelled ‘Daddy!’ ” he said. “That was cool.”
For now, the Airhearts have decided to protect Jade from knowing too much.
“If I get stressed, it will just affect Jade,” Cindy Airheart said. “I don’t want to tell her more than I need to. Right now, I just tell her that Daddy is going to work. She understands that.”