February 20, 2007
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Small towns paying nearly half of war’s toll
ANALYSIS SHOWS MANY WAR DEAD FROM POOR AREAS
Associated PressMCKEESPORT, Pa. – Edward “Willie” Carman wanted a ticket out of town, and the Army provided it.
Raised in the projects by a single mother in McKeesport, a blighted, old industrial steel town outside Pittsburgh, the 18-year-old saw the military as an opportunity.
“I’m not doing it to you; I’m doing it for me,” he told his mother, Joanna Hawthorne, after coming home from high school one day and surprising her with the news.
When Carman died in Iraq three years ago at age 27, he had money saved for college, a fiancee and two children — including a baby son he had never met. Neighbors in Hawthorne‘s mobile home park collected $400 and left it in an envelope at her door.
For a year after his death, Hawthorne took a chair to the cemetery nearly every day, sat next to his grave and talked quietly. Her vigil continues even now; the visits have slowed to once a week, but the pain sticks.
Across the nation, small towns are quietly bearing the war’s burden. Nearly half the 3,146 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq have come from towns similar to McKeesport, where fewer than 25,000 people live, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. One in five hailed from hometowns of less than 5,000.
The Census Bureau said 56 percent of the population in 2005 lived in towns of less than 25,000 residents and in unincorporated areas. The 2000 census showed 16 percent of the population lived in unincorporated rural areas.
Many of the hometowns of the war dead are not only small, but also poor. The AP analysis found that nearly three-quarters of those killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average.
Some are old factory towns similar to McKeesport, once home to U.S. Steel’s National Tube Works, which employed 8,000 people in its heyday. Now, residents’ average income is 60 percent of the national average, and one in eight lives below the federal poverty line.
On a per capita basis, states with mostly rural populations have suffered the highest casualties in Iraq. Vermont, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Delaware, Montana, Louisiana and Oregon top the list, the AP found.
There is a “basic unfairness” about the number of soldiers dying in Iraq who are from rural areas, said William O’Hare, senior visiting fellow at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute, which examines rural issues.
Diminished opportunities are one factor in higher military enlistment rates in rural areas. From 1997 to 2003, 1.5 million rural workers lost their jobs because of changes in industries such as manufacturing that have traditionally employed rural workers, according to the Carsey Institute.
Rural communities are “being asked to pay a bigger price for this military adventure, if I can use that word, than their urban counterparts,” O’Hare said.
As a result, in more than a thousand small towns across the country — from Glendive, Mont., to Barnwell, S.C., to Caledonia, Miss., and from Hardwick, Vt., to Clinton, Ohio — friends and families have been left struggling to make sense of a loved one’s death in Iraq. It is a struggle that hits with a special intensity in tight-knit, small towns.
“In a small community, even if you don’t know somebody’s name you at least know their face, you’ve seen them before, talked to them maybe,” said Chuck Bevington, whose 22-year-old brother Allan, from Beaver Falls, Pa., died in Iraq, after volunteering for a second tour. “A small community feels it a lot tighter because they’ve had more contact with each other.”
Even strangers come up and hug his mother, he said.
Death isn’t the only burden the war has visited on the nation’s small towns.
Entrepreneurs in many small communities have lost their businesses after deploying in the Guard and Reserves, said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. More federal dollars also are needed to ensure that returning soldiers have easy access to veterans health centers, he said.
“It’s an issue of fairness that these folks are willing to go over and fight wars and put their lives on the line and really back this country up the way they have. . . . We owe it to them to live up to our obligation of benefits,” Tester said.
Another fairness issue, raised by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., is the Pentagon’s practice of transporting the remains of military personnel killed in Iraq only to the nearest major airport. Stupak said it “imposes a burden on the family and friends when they should instead receive our support.” He has introduced legislation to require the Defense Department to deliver the remains to the military or civilian airport chosen by the family.
While support for the war in rural areas initially was high, there has been a sharp decline in the past three years. AP-Ipsos polls show that those in rural areas who said it was the right decision to go to war dropped from 73 percent in April 2004 to 39 percent now. In urban areas, support declined from 43 percent in 2004 to 30 percent now.
Marty Newell, chief operating officer of the Whitesburg, Ky.-based Center for Rural Strategies, said rural areas supported the war early on because so many of their young men and women were fighting it.
“The reason that support is dwindling now is the same reason that support would’ve been strong before, and that is that we know a lot more about it,” he said. “We know what the real costs are, and we know what the real story is. . . . Every day there’s another small town that has one of their own come home less than whole, and there are a lot of small towns like that.”
As the war drags on into its fourth year, Vietnam War historian Christian Appy said the burden it has placed on smaller communities — just as it did in Vietnam — can be an “embittering experience.”
“I think people in many of those towns are deeply patriotic and want to support the country. But as time goes on, it’s becoming increasingly clear to those people that their country and its security is not at stake in this war and in Vietnam,” Appy said.
Hawthorne is not waiting on history’s verdict. She is bitter about a military she said enticed her son with promises of money, then sent him to a war based on a lie.
When her son’s first enlistment was nearing an end, before the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, Hawthorne said he decided to re-enlist, partly because the signing bonus of more than $10,000 would help pay his bills. At the time, he was facing $600 in monthly child support payments from his failed first marriage.
When he deployed to Iraq, his sister said, he had money saved and planned to go to college when he got out of the military in 2005.
He died in Iraq in 2004 when his tank overturned.
Hawthorne said the military gave her $4,000 for his funeral, but it was not enough to cover the $14,000 expense. The funeral home forgave the rest, and neighbors collected $400 to help her get by.
“You don’t see anyone who has money putting their children into the military,” she said. “I’m all for our soldiers. Without them our country wouldn’t be where we are today, but this war just doesn’t seem right. Like the Vietnam one. It’s not right.”
