Bakersfield Life

Far From Home for the Holidays

Far From Home for the Holidays

For many Bakersfield families, though everything else may remain intact, one vital piece will be missing from the Christmas festivities this year: A loved one currently serving overseas in the military.

Some are comforted by the encouraging and reassuring words of family members who’ve also served overseas.

Others continually remind themselves that their husband, son, wife or daughter know what they are doing. And yet others fill their days with activities, so as to not allow too much time to dwell on the fact that a loved one is gone.

Here are three examples of how military families are dealing with the pain – and pride – of being separated from their loved ones during the holidays:
The Felix Family While her husband Richard is off fighting in Iraq, Lupe Felix finds solace in the fact that he has nearly 24 years of experience in the military and because of this, he knows what he is doing.

“I just know that if something were to happen, somebody would contact us right away. I try to not worry about that part,” she said. “I just have faith that he knows what he’s doing.” Richard, 42, an E6-1st class in the Navy, is currently serving his second tour in Iraq as part of an engineering and construction battalion. He also served in the Gulf War.

He enlisted in the Army right after high school and switched to the Navy 14 years ago. As his wife explains it, he joined because he wasn’t sure what else he wanted to do. But once he got in, he liked the structure, he liked the opportunities it provided and he liked the chance to travel and live virtually anywhere.

He married Lupe, 41, a program tech at Worker’s Compensation, eight years ago.

Together they have one son, 7-year-old R.J. (short for Richard Felix, Jr. Or simply Junior), a second-grader at Thorner Elementary School.

One major difference between her husband’s last stint in Iraq five years ago and this one is that R.J. now has some understanding of his dad’s role overseas. It has been difficult to strike a balance between giving him too much information and keeping him completely in the dark. At the beginning, Lupe and Richard kept it to the basics, but now she leaves it to R.J. to bring up the subject and ask questions, which she tries to answer and talk through with him as best as possible. And in an effort “to not make him have anxiety or anything … I just try to keep reinforcing that his dad’s doing his job and knows what he’s doing. I just try to not elaborate on exactly what he’s doing there,” she said.

As Christmas approaches, Lupe hopes to keep everything as normal as possible for her son’s sake. They’ll still be visiting both sides of the family, and R.J. will even have presents under the Christmas tree from his dad, who managed to order gifts online.

Lupe and R.J. also bought Christmas presents for Richard, though they’ve decided to save them until he returns, so they can open the presents together.

For all special occasions, Lupe said she is trying to take as many pictures as possible, to either send to Richard or save for when he returns, and remember as many details as possible to tell Richard later.

Before he left, Lupe and Richard made a pact to not unnecessarily worry each other while separated. That means that Lupe does not tell her husband when something breaks down or about the minor, everyday problems she may encounter, “because he can’t do anything about it but will still worry about it.” And the same goes for Richard.

He doesn’t tell Lupe when he’s having a bad day or every detail of his life in Iraq, though he would tell her anything she really needed to know, like if he got hurt, for example.

More than anything, Lupe and R.J. draw their support from both Lupe’s and Richard’s large, extended families – Lupe has seven brothers and five sisters. “They’re always there, asking how we’re doing and if we need anything,” she said. Lupe even has a brother who served in the Marines and a nephew in the Air Force, both of whom served tours in Iraq, so they know firsthand what her husband is facing. Her brothers are always reassuring her that Richard knows what he is doing and he wouldn’t be there if he didn’t.

Nineteen-month-old Elizabeth looks at a photo of her father, Cameron Nowell, a CW2 in the Army currently serving in Iraq.

Though she misses him, Lupe knows that this is a commitment her duty-bound husband must complete.

“People always ask how I let him do it, and I always say, ‘I didn’t let him do it.’ I knew what he was when I met him and married him. Although he was a reservist, I knew that he could go at any time,” Lupe said. “I would have never asked him not to do it, because he believed it was his duty and he chose to do this. He never would have turned down something or even volunteered for the military if he didn’t know what he was getting into.”
The Nowell Family
It was difficult when Katie Nowell’s husband left shortly after their May 1, 2004 wedding to serve a tour in Afghanistan. As a result, Katie spent much of her time dwelling on the fact that he was gone.

Now, four years later, Cameron, 36, a CW2 in the Army, is serving a 12- to 15- month-long tour in Iraq. And this time, 27- year-old Katie is wiser.

She has learned to keep busy, filling her time with school (she just received her bachelor’s degree in history from Chaminade University, based in Honolulu, Hawaii) and volunteering (she helps out at the Kern County Museum and aids a friend who teaches sixth grade at Standard Middle School). She’s also busy caring for their 19- month-old daughter, Elizabeth.

She has also learned the importance of keeping in constant communication with her husband. He usually calls home once a week, but the 10-hour time difference makes getting in touch difficult. However, the Internet – and especially webcams – has been her saving grace. She e-mails Cameron at least twice a day to keep him up-to-date with what’s going on at home. She also “practically walks around with a camera in hand,” so that she can e-mail him pictures to keep him connected to what’s happening at home.

Christmas is going to be especially tough, though – and understandably so.

“He’s not going to be here to see her open all her presents. I’ll video record and I’ll take pictures, but it’s just not the same,” she said. “But he missed her first birthday and he’ll miss her second birthday, so I’ve already had a little bit of him not being here for certain events. I’ve dealt with that before.

“In a way, she’s still so young that she doesn’t really have a clue. But then again, she’s 19 months old; so every day she’s learning something new. That’s really hard. I just think, ‘Oh, he’s missing out on her saying this or doing that. So I think that’s the hardest part of him being gone. I look at her every day and I see him. And I see her doing stuff, and I’m like, ‘I wish your dad was here.’” This year, the family will be keeping the celebrations the same, albeit with a lot more videos and pictures than in years past. However, since it does take a few weeks to ship packages to Iraq, Katie did her Christmas shopping in October this year, which was a little weird, she said.

“It was like, here I am, wrapping stuff in Christmas paper, and it’s not even Halloween yet,” she joked.

When her husband was deployed in July, Katie decided to move back in with her parents in Bakersfield. Before he left, Cameron had been stationed at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, but Katie couldn’t imagine staying there, because “Alaska is just so different, so cut off from the rest of the world.” Plus, she wanted the extra help in caring for Elizabeth.

Though she does have the support of her parents and sister, the biggest drawback of living in Bakersfield has been losing the constant support of other military wives and families.

“If I was in Alaska, I would have all the other wives whose husbands are gone, who understand each other,” she said. “But being in Bakersfield, there aren’t too many military families – that I know of anyway – that are around. So when I say, ‘Oh, my husband’s gone,’ it’s like no one else has had a spouse be gone for so long to understand what I’m going through.”

The Rodarte Family
Patrick Ortega had always considered joining the military, but after high school he decided to try his hand at plumbing and dishwashing and construction instead. These were OK jobs but they weren’t getting him anywhere. So he decided to go for it: He enlisted in the Marines.

Patrick is currently serving as a lance corporal in the Marine Corps; he was deployed to Iraq on Aug. 31.

Though there was no doubt from the get-go that the 24-year-old would eventually end up in either Iraq or Afghanistan, the transition has been difficult for his family and mother Patty Rodarte especially.

“There are times when I think about him, like right now, and I’ll just break down. But I’m by myself and nobody sees it,” Patty said. “(On the phone), I just keep straight. I don’t (tell him) that I’m worried. I just say, ‘I love you and I’m proud of you. Just come home safe.’ “I try to keep cool the same way that he is. He’s just very nonchalant about everything over there.

It’s just like, “Oh, by the way, we got hit.” So I try to stay cool about it and not show him that I’m fearful, to keep him in the attitude that he has, keep him OK,” Patty said.

“Adding salt to the wound,” this Christmas also marks the first since Patty’s father passed away last January from a sudden, massive heart attack.

He was in good health and had no major health problems, so it was completely unexpected. With her father’s death and Patrick now in Iraq, “it really has been a double hitter on our family,” Patty said.

She has found her strength, though, in Patrick and what he is doing. He’s even inspired her and her husband, Fernando Rodarte, to start going to the gym. “It encourages both of us to be strong.
We try to find the time to keep the deal that we made until he gets back,” Fernando said.

“We know that we’ve got to get off the couch or wherever, because we know that he’s out there, and we’re going to keep doing that.” Though he also misses his family, Patty said her son has found a real zeal in serving in Iraq.

“I think he misses being with the family, being over there. But he has an excitement to him, because he’s traveled everywhere. To me, it seems like it’s really exciting for him to do what he’s doing. I think that (overpowers) missing people here,” she said.

Fernando also has a son, Michael Rodarte, from a previous marriage currently serving a two-year stint in South Korea. He is a senior airman in the Air Force and has been on active duty for the past 10 years.

Since Michael has been in the military for several years now, Fernando said he has managed to program himself to not show a lot of worry and to keep himself from dwelling on the negative.

Because both Patrick and Michael are in different time zones from their parents and spend much of their time either working or out in the field, coordinating phone calls usually proves to be a challenge. Patty said she talks to her son about once a week, though since he works as a military police escorting convoys through Northern Iraq, it has been harder to communicate with him as he frequently leaves on missions. Fernando also tries to talk to his son regularly, though admittedly it’s much harder now that he’s stationed overseas.

“We just have to be patient and wait for them to make that call. A lot of times, when we don’t hear from them, we start wondering, and that’s when we say a little prayer and hope everything is OK,” Fernando said.

“It’s a sigh of relief when we do get those calls.” During those times when they haven’t heard from Patrick or Michael, they rely on memories of the past, “of the fun times we shared with the kids when they were here,” to keep them looking forward to the next phone call, Fernando said.

Patrick also keeps in contact with his sisters (Nicky, 35, and Christine, 34) through MySpace and e-mail, and his sisters, in turn, relay his messages to the rest of the family.

Patty and Fernando receive most of their support from her big family – a family in which everyone is constantly asking how he is doing and if they can see pictures.

She also receives a lot of support from the mother of one of her son’s friends, Ernest, himself a former soldier in Iraq. So his mom knows firsthand what Patty is going through. In fact, “she was like a second mother (to Patrick), so when he went to Iraq, she cried more than I did, I think. She’s a lot of support to us, too,” Patty said.