A folded flag can't cover the wounds of war

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Monday, June 21, 2004

A folded flag can't cover the wounds of war

By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

The instant Julie Allen spotted the triangular box, she made the connection.

An American flag, folded in that distinctive shape, was on its way home to a place where a triangle would never fit the hole left in a family.

Allen has a box just like that at home. Inside is the flag that covered the coffin of 1st Lt. Karl F. Erb, U.S. Army, 25, killed in Vietnam on May 20, 1967. She was a baby -- his only child -- and he was the father she would never know.

As she deplaned that day last week during a quick turnaround business trip to San Jose, Allen found herself behind the young, clean-cut man so carefully carrying the box.

"Lt. Ballard," the printing read.

Back in the office of her sunny house above Seattle's Green Lake, Allen checked the Internet: Army 1st Lt. Kenneth Michael Ballard, 26, of Mountainview, Calif. Killed May 30 during a firefight in Najaf, Iraq. Only child of Karen Meredith, a single mother.

Meredith had posted her son's photos on her Web site to remind the world "there are real people over there -- it's important to know it wasn't just a news story," she wrote.

After serving in Bosnia, Kenneth earned a degree in international relations at Middle Tennessee State University. After two more years in the Army, he had planned to get a master's degree and work in Washington, D.C.

Allen often thinks of how much living her own father squeezed into the 25 years he had. He was already a law school graduate. He was married and had a baby girl by the time he died in Vietnam.

"On the anniversary of his death, I always know he has been dead for as many years as I am old," Allen said. "It leaves me with a great sadness, especially these days as history replays itself and I read about all the soldiers leaving small children, widows, pregnant wives and others they love behind. I think of kids growing up without their fathers. I have the most wonderful (adoptive) father. But nothing ever erases a loss like that."

Like most of us, Allen could pause only a moment on the day she recognized the box. There was work to do and her own family waited at home.

"That's the way this war is," she said. "It seems so far away."

At least until it takes a dad or mom, son or daughter away forever.

The day we talked at Allen's home while her toddler, Sebastian, arranged his tiny trucks in a row, another triangular flag held by another family had appeared on the front page of this paper. Lake Stevens grad and Marine Corps Pfc. Cody Shea Calavan, who looked a lot like his mother, had died May 29, killed by a car bomb in Iraq. He was 19.

Allen hopes these families don't think their sons are soon forgotten.

"Many of us do know about them. Each one is loved and missed and remembered," Allen said. "Politics aside, we shouldn't forget them."

To those now losing loved ones in Iraq, Allen wants to say, "No, he or she didn't die forgotten. People, even strangers, care. We don't and won't forget. I just hope there's a measure of comfort in that."

Personal experience tells her that what's ahead for these families will be a complicated, lifelong process. But there is hope as well as sadness.

She thinks about the strength of her mother, just 23 and a widow with a baby, her husband dead before their first wedding anniversary. She must have known some good still lay ahead. And with a growing baby, it was time to rebuild her life.

She went back to school, got her degree and remarried when Allen was 4.

She was honest and open with her little girl, telling her she was lucky, in a way, to have a daddy beside her on Earth and another one watching from above.

But she made sure the family didn't feel they lived with a ghost, that her new husband never felt he must compete with someone who would always be 25 and a hero.

Photos and family stories aside, Allen came to realize that she will never know who Karl Erb really was. Still, there are times even now when it's hard for her to say, out loud, that he never saw her grow up. And that he'll never see her own two children.

"It's quite something to think about. And, at the same time, it's also becoming ancient history," she said.

Someday she will be the person responsible for his grave. She'll try to explain that to her kids and she wonders what they will understand.

As her return plane descended into Seattle last week, Allen was still thinking about the box when she spotted a rainbow outside her window -- the first she has seen from an airplane.

"It seemed like a symbol of hope," Allen said. She wishes Kenneth's mother could have seen it, too.

More headlines and info from Green Lake.