Guard support wins young hearts

Once a month on Saturday afternoons, the children of N.C. National Guard soldiers deployed in Iraq gather for storytime at a Lexington armory, where they're read to by a Davidson County librarian.

Earlier this year, the children and hundreds of other residents sent giant banners scrawled with their names to the Middle East. And anytime they like, the children can check out books from the library with names such as "My Daddy is a Guardsman" or "Love Lizzie: Letters to a Military Mom."

Libraries don't generally get involved in mentoring military families.

Neither do school systems or doctor's offices or county parks departments.

But a program gaining traction in North Carolina and about to be developed nationally is trying to mobilize communities to help families who, because they don't live near military bases, don't always receive support to deal with loved ones' deployments.

The program comes as the nation is relying more on its citizen soldiers. Nearly a fifth of the troops serving in Iraq and almost a quarter in Afghanistan are with the National Guard or Reserves. As of this week, nearly 120,000 Guard troops and Reservists are deployed in all manner of duties: fighting the war on terror, battling forest fires and guarding the border with Mexico.

Congress is poised to pledge $5 million -- in a bill expected to pass this month -- to the Citizen-Soldier Support Program, a year-old project run out of UNC-Chapel Hill and aided by other universities in the UNC system.

Supporters of the program in the U.S. Department of Defense want it to go nationwide. Jim Martin, a retired Army colonel who directs the program, was in the Pentagon recently, meeting with military officials about training counselors in other states to work with new mothers whose partners are deployed.

"Whenever one of these folks [is deployed], they have families, those lives are disrupted," Martin said. "Often it's other people in the community who can be helpful."

Martin said the program differs from existing Defense Department services in a few key ways. It helps families of National Guard troops, the part-time soldiers called up for natural disasters and specific deployments, and of Reservists, who complement active-duty military branches. These troops don't normally live near military bases and so don't have ready access to services offered there.

The program also doesn't provide services directly. Instead, community liaisons contact local agencies about how the agencies can serve military families in their midst.

"That's generally the first question out of their mouth: 'What can we do to help?' " said Roman Bowles, a community liaison who covers 30 counties in the Piedmont and western Triangle.

"I say, 'What can you do to help?' "

Then, he said, "they just go to town."

Agencies hold clothing drives, blood drives, fishing days for children. They sign banners and hold military appreciation days.

"Often times, we forget about the issues the families are going through," Bowles said. "And a lot of them, it's the first time they've gone through this."

This month, the State Board of Education plans to send booklets from the program to every local superintendent, Martin said.

The packets include information on helping the children of National Guard and Reserve troops -- the stresses kids face, how to deal with a drop in grades or unusual behavior.

'We're bridges'

"We're bridges," Martin said. "We connect families and resources."

When Ruth Ann Copley, Davidson County library director, learned that the 505th Engineering Battalion from the N.C. National Guard was headed to Iraq last year, her staff started working. She bought about $1,000 worth of books for kids and adults on the military experience.