Sacrifice not required of all, but some help would be nice

With my wife going out of town for three nights, she developed a battle plan designed to help me and our three sons survive her absence. She bought groceries, set up playdates, arranged the birthday party overnight for our youngest and organized car pools for all the Saturday soccer games. With all her planning, help from neighbors and friends, and my decision to take off Friday from work, we should get through the long weekend.

Danette Hayes of Buffalo Grove knows the bit of stress my family is going through - multiplied a few hundred agonizing times over.

"I'm the wife of a National Guardsman," Hayes writes in her blog called "400 days," named after the time of deployment required of the men and women in our National Guard.

Spouses of guardsmen deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and other dangerous locations (Hayes' husband, Col. Richard Hayes, got back in July after a year in Kosovo), have all the loneliness and day-to-day stress of single-parenthood aggravated by the ever-present fear that their loved ones could be killed, maimed or changed forever by the hardships that come with serving our nation.

"Our motto is 'Our families also serve,'" says Lt. Col. Joseph Schweickert, who heads up family programs for the National Guard in Illinois.

My "rough" weekend without my wife is a grain of sand on the beach of hardships for military families, many of whom already are single parents who must depend on grandparents or others for help.

In their 19 years of marriage, Hayes' husband has "spent three birthdays and five anniversaries with me," she notes.

The time her husband spent helping people recover from Hurricane Katrina might have qualified as the sacrifice of a lifetime for the National Guard a generation ago. Now our wars put so many more demands on guardsmen and their families.

"They are tired, and their families are tired," notes Hayes, a mother of three.

During World War II, Americans who weren't directly involved in fighting the war overseas made sacrifices at home that contributed to the war effort. Today's wars demand nothing of most Americans - other than paying taxes to fund them.

The Department of Justice has had to sue hundreds of businesses, including high-profile cases against American Airlines and Wal-Mart, to make sure employers follow the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act that protects the jobs and salaries of people while they are serving the nation.

In 1987, the Illinois National Guard formed a Family Readiness Group that helps people deal with the stress and challenges faced by families of deployed guardsmen. While regular Army soldiers have families that live on or near a base, where support is plentiful, members of the National Guard come from private homes spanning a wide geographic area.

"When you deploy from a small town, everybody does know everybody," Schweickert says. "But when a unit from Elgin deploys, you might have 80 towns represented."

A spouse of an officer might be several hours away from the nearest support agency, says Maj. Brad Leighton, director of public affairs for Illinois National Guard.

A month after Richard Hayes returned to the states, the couple attended a "reintegration" meeting in Kansas.

The transient nature of many suburbs doesn't help.

"In some cases, people don't even know their own neighbors," Leighton adds. "They might not even know that the woman across the street has three kids and her husband just got deployed."

But the family readiness program does accept volunteers. Phone toll-free at 800 832-9225 or go to www.il.ngb.army.mil/familyreadiness for details on the program. One suburban mom phoned recently to volunteer her two smart sons as tutors for children of service members, Schweickert says,

"It is difficult, but we're trying to do more outreach," Schweickert adds.

Hayes hopes to raise awareness and make life better for families who are making sacrifices. Improving the situation takes more than slapping a yellow ribbon magnet on the back of a car.

"If you know a soldier's family, offer to help out with carpools, pick up groceries, cook a meal, take a child to a ballgame or attend one of theirs," Hayes writes in her blog. "Fall is coming. Planting flowers or perennials, helping with lawn care, fall cleanup, raking leaves is a major step toward alleviating the stress of a spouse's day-

"Most of all," Hayes concludes, "say, 'Thank You,' as often as you can."

Thank you.