Vermont's War
It's known for liberal politics. But the Green Mountain State has also paid a heavy price in Iraq
MILTON, VT.-The last of the thin December light was fading as Heather Sheehan made her way past rows of gray, age-pocked headstones that line the old Milton Village Cemetery road.
Ahead, her children, Nathaniel, 8, and Alyson, 5, raced through slush under dark, bare trees and waited for their mother at a familiar spot, where freshly turned earth and miniature American flags speak of deaths more recent, grief more raw.
Their father is buried here in the state's northwest corner, his smooth granite headstone etched with images that tell the story of a young father's loves-a catcher's mitt, a hockey player, an eight-point buck, and the date he married Heather, his Springfield (Vt.) High School sweetheart.
Army National Guard Sgt. Kevin Sheehan, 36, and his fellow guardsman, Spc. Alan Bean Jr., 22, killed in the same mortar attack south of Baghdad on May 25, 2004, were the first Vermont guardsmen to die in combat since the Korean War. They thus became members of a group that, to outsiders, seems an aberration in this Democratic state: Vermont, where nearly three quarters of residents oppose the war, has the nation's highest per capita death rate in Iraq.
It's a statistic seemingly at odds with the state's reputation as a modern-day liberal utopia, a low-stress playground for the escape-from-New York crowd. It's been 18 years since a Republican presidential candidate won here, and Ben and Jerry are giving away to left-leaning causes a fortune amassed making ice cream with names like "Karamel Sutra." Last fall voters here elected to the U.S. Senate its first self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders.
Sacrifice. But maybe it's not so counterintuitive. An analysis of Defense Department records last year by demographer William O'Hare for the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute found that rural states like Vermont and South Dakota have shouldered an inordinate war burden-they have per capita death rates far higher than urbanized states like Michigan and California. Indeed, in the quiet corners of the Green Mountain State, where men like Sheehan and Bean lived off the beaten path, the politics can harken back to Vermont's more conservative roots. And here-in hamlets like Milton and Bridport and Hardwick-military service has remained a time-honored tradition dating to the days of the Green Mountain Boys and the state's mythic Revolutionary War hero, Ethan Allen.
"Vermonters historically have been good soldiers," says historian Howard Coffin of Montpelier, author of books about the heroics of the state's Civil War fighting brigades. "They were rural kids, farm boys who grew up walking and were in good condition. And all of them could shoot."
Like many before him, Sheehan, a civil engineer, saw himself that way. "He always knew he wanted to serve his country," his 37-year-old widow said, as dusk settled over her husband's grave and she and the children climbed into the car for a short ride to the home she and Kevin bought seven years ago.
But with the tally of dead Americans hitting 3,000 at the end of 2006 and President Bush calling for more troops, many Vermonters are asking whether they've already sacrificed too much for a cause whose lofty original aims may be unreachable. The count of Vermont's war dead now ranges from 18 to 23, depending on how the list makers define the soldiers' state connections and whether the count includes National Guard Sgt. 1st Class John Stone, 52, of Norwich, killed in Afghanistan last year.
"The war has been very personal in Vermont," says Sanders, whose stepson's childhood friend, National Guard 2nd Lt. Mark Procopio of Stowe, was killed in Ramadi in late 2005-one of six state guardsmen in Task Force Saber who died in that violent Sunni triangle city when they relieved a Marine unit. "We see the pain and the loss, and that has the effect of making people wonder why," Sanders said.
With the nation's second-smallest state population, 624,000, Vermonters know the dead. They know their children and parents and grandparents. There have been antiwar protests-a handful of folks still march in front of the Montpelier post office once a week down State Street from the Capitol, and 50 communities in 2005 passed referendums that asked the administration to reconsider its involvement in Iraq. But most displays have been quiet and respectful, like Russ Bennett's field south of Waitsfield, where small white flags honor U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. The war has touched almost everyone, said state archivist Gregory Sanford, "but what do we do now?"
It's an excruciating question for Vermonters who have lost loved ones, made more painful by the debate over whether to bring the troops home or send in more. What will honor their loved ones? And what will more deployments mean for Vermont?
Traveling Interstate 89, it's easy to imagine that the Vermont idealized by Norman Rockwell can be found off any exit ramp. Low clouds hugged the mountain valleys on a drizzly December day; white church steeples and red barns peeked through forests. But those views can mask the scarce opportunities for young people who don't go to college yet long to stay. Family farms have all but disappeared; at the start of this decade, only 3 percent of the state's working population was still engaged in agriculture. A local think tank recently warned that if the state doesn't create jobs that keep young people here, it will soon face dire tax and budget problems.
Service. So military recruiters continue to hit pay dirt. Despite deep losses suffered by the Vermont National Guard-nine of the state's war dead are guardsmen, the others active duty-the guard's annual recruiting numbers at the end of November were the nation's best in terms of exceeding goals. Vermont National Guard Lt. Col. John Boyd maintains that the success, while in part about desire to serve, is no mystery. "Let's be honest; full-time guard pay is really good money for this state," says Boyd, who once headed the state's recruiting and retention effort. Even part-time service pays well, he says, and has attractive benefits. There are 950 full-timers in Vermont's Army and Air National Guard and an additional 2,650 part-timers-those who attend drills one weekend a month and two full weeks a year. There have been 2,500 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan from their ranks, including multiple air guard deployments for shorter assignments.
Though some minimize the lure of the money and benefits-"You offer a guy a couple hundred dollars, and he may lose his life serving his country?" asks Vermont Adjutant Gen. Mike Dubie-the economics can't be ignored. Since 2005, the part-timers have received $20,000 signing bonuses and are eligible for state and federal education aid. They receive the equivalent of two days of active-duty pay for every drill day, a range of $170 to $1,500 per weekend depending on rank and length of service. At age 60, those who have put in 20 years qualify for medical coverage and a military retirement equal to half their base pay. A harder sell, Boyd says, has been retaining those who have seen war up close. "They've been in Iraq, they've been in Afghanistan, and they know you're not in the National Guard to get out of something."
Kevin Sheehan joined during peacetime and enjoyed the drill weekends with others like him-outdoorsmen who lived on country roads, often deep in the woods, and loved to hunt and fish. Military service for many was simply an extension of that lifestyle. The money helped, his wife said, "though it's not like we won the lottery." But when her husband called home on 9/11, she remembers thinking as she held little Alyson: "This could touch us."
Stories. A group of students at Norwich University in Norwich, the nation's oldest private military school, in recent months has been piecing together a documentary on just how intensely the war has touched the state. Vermont Fallen, a compilation of heart-rending interviews with families like the Sheehans who have lost loved ones in Iraq, will be shown to them for the first time this week. Norwich Prof. William Estill, who has overseen the project, says he hopes the video will eventually be shown to a wider audience. But it has already had the effect of connecting the families, known historically as Gold Star families, and in the process has helped create a statewide support group of those trying to live with the anguish of loss.
Just before Christmas, 10 Gold Star family members, including Sheehan, gathered at Sarducci's restaurant on the banks of the Winooski River in Montpelier to eat pasta and talk about what they've lost. They'd come wearing matching sweatshirts printed with the faces of the fallen and greeted each other with hugs and laughter. The tears, too, would come-but later.
"This is the final gift from our boys; that's why we're together," said Marion Gray, whose stepson, Jamie, 29, a National Guard sergeant, died in a roadside bomb attack in 2004. She's the group's "Mama Goose," the one who makes the phone calls, sends the E-mails, and visits the grieving, pulling together the families to share their stories.
"With this group, you almost feel normal again," added Kevin McLaughlin, here with his wife, Vicki. The McLaughlins and Gary and Janet Merchant, who were sitting at the end of the table, are all from tiny Hardwick (population 3,230) and lost their sons to violence in Ramadi within months of each other. Chris Merchant, who would have turned 33 on this day, was a school custodian and married father of four who wanted extra income to help his family and had hopes of becoming a teacher, his father said.
"I want Chris and the others to be remembered as heroes who fought for freedom," said Gary Merchant. "It's terrible to lose all of our boys, but they were doing what they were meant to do, and with a lot of courage."
Jamie Gray's father, Steve, who recently retired as head of Montpelier's public works department, opened up a scrapbook of his son's life. There was Jamie tapping a maple tree with his uncle on the farm the family lived on for seven generations, holding a string of fish caught at the family's fishing camp, standing by a deer strung up and ready to gut.
The Grays don't want the troops pulled out of Iraq. The president should be supported, said Marion, archly noting that the road to Canada is nearby. Though most at the table described themselves as nonpolitical, they said they know that things have gone wrong in Iraq. They talked of sympathy for the Iraqis, about how their boys loved the children there, and their hopes that the kindnesses their sons showed to the youngsters may make a difference someday.
"But now we're there, and it's messed up," said Kevin McLaughlin, who wears his son Scott's camouflage jacket. "We can't just leave. It would be a waste of my son's life."
As plates were cleared, a waitress delivered to the Merchants a thick piece of chocolate cake to mark Chris's birthday, a tiny candle burning at its center. "I don't want to blow it out," Janet said as the group finished singing "Happy Birthday."
"My wish," she said, "can't come true."
Home. In Milton, Heather Sheehan now presides alone over a home crowded with the sweet, familiar debris of family life-pet dishes for the cats and dogs, photos taped to the refrigerator, her son's red-and-green gumdrop tree. On one recent day, Alyson played near the Christmas tree with a new plastic pony, and Nathaniel-the spitting image of his red-haired father-sat on the couch, his nose buried in a Hardy Boys mystery, but not missing a word his mother was saying.
"We talk about their dad every day," said Sheehan, who works as a home health pediatrics therapist and said her husband's careful financial planning has left them with a financially stable life. Alyson, with her mother's prompting, happily remembered that her dad loved the special bubble light on the Christmas tree and that he liked to call her Cookie and Choo Choo. Nathaniel, intelligent and watchful, has had a tougher time, his mom said. His bedroom pays tribute to his dad: painted camouflage green, with his dad's uniform pockets hanging over the headboard. But Sheehan said the family has taken advantage of every service offered them; they even attended a unique grief camp. It's all about remembering and honoring Kevin, but moving forward, she said.
It was a simple life they shared here in this small town near Lake Champlain, she said, a life in which being close to the land, caring for the children, and just being home safe under one roof seemed enough.
"Is his death a tragedy? Absolutely. But I do not believe it was in vain."
"Kevin," she said quietly, through tears, "was honored to serve his country."
This story appears in the January 22, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.