Two-year-old Carolina Rodgers doesn’t understand why her father isn’t there to help her brush her teeth at night. She sometimes thinks he’s just around the corner in another room, and will be at her side at any moment.
Carolina’s older sister, Simcha, 7, understands a bit better that her daddy isn’t going to come home in the next few weeks. Before he left for Kuwait some six weeks ago, Marine Corps reservist Lt. Col. Tom Rodgers, 40, a member of Beth Hillel Temple in Kenosha, explained to Simcha that “he was going to Kuwait to help people and save our country.”
“He told the girls that what he is doing is not about hurting people,” said his wife, Linda. “They can understand a little bit. Simcha is very proud of him; she sees him as a very special person. Still it’s hard. So hard. They miss him terribly.”
Over the past two weeks, this reporter spoke by telephone with a few of the families in our community who have loved ones in the military, and with two of those currently serving.
With an estimated 20,000 Jews in the U.S. military, approximately 1.5 percent of Americans on active duty, it’s sometimes easy to forget them and the contributions they make.
One theme ran through each conversation with a parent, a wife or an adult child who chose to join the military — that of pride of service and belief in the need to serve one’s country.
“Tom didn’t join the Marines in 1980 [and remain a reservist] to go to war,” said Linda. “He’s always been a patriotic person. Joining the military he said is not about just going and shooting people; but if called to defend his country, without hesitation, he will do that.”
Though Linda does not know exactly where her husband, a combat engineer, is right now, he said in an e-mail last week that he was well, and he “seemed in pretty good spirits,” she said.
Family history
Specialist David Albert, 23, son of Dr. Philip and the late Patricia Albert of Wausau, is currently stationed in Fort Bragg, N.C., according to his father, a radiologist who was a career medical officer in the Navy and remained in the reserves until 1995.
“David grew up with a strong military background,” said his father, explaining that several other family members have served or are serving in the military.
The pride in his voice clear, Albert said that David “was one of the highest-ranking cadets in his class at St. John’s Military Academy [in Delafield]; the first lieutenant in the corps of cadets. Now he’s a fire direction specialist for multiple launch rocket systems, helping to aim the heavy ordinance that supports airborne and Ranger units.”
“Almost undoubtedly he will go over [to the war in Iraq]; his equipment has been sent,” said his father. “Of course I worry, how can you not? But I think he’s going to be all right. His role is not in the front lines, but on the other hand, things can happen, as we have seen. Still, the chances are very good that he will come through it and do okay….”
No problem being Jewish
Albert’s comment that “it was well known that he was Jewish when he himself was in the Navy,” and that being Jewish was not a problem for him or his son, was echoed by two Nicolet High School graduates currently serving in the military.
Jonathan Esh Lowe, 31, son of Anne and David E. Lowe of Brown Deer, a captain in the U.S. Air Force Space Command stationed at Cavalier Air Force Station in North Dakota, said that he has “only run across two Jews in my nine years of service.”
“But I haven’t felt any discomfort about being Jewish,” the 1990 Nicolet grad said, “and I know that I couldn’t be a Jew in the military in many other countries. That fact alone is one of the reasons I serve, to support the freedoms of minorities like myself.”
Though “he has very little direct connection to the war in Iraq” in his role of monitoring satellites and other objects in space northward over Canada to the North Pole, Lowe said he “whole-heartedly supports my government in whatever decision they make.”
“I have a bachelor’s degree in international relations with a topic area in the Middle East from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship, and I believe that my government is smarter than I am and has information that I don’t,” he explained. “I understand that what we are doing in Iraq is a necessary evil.”
Nineteen-year-old Airman Jacob Shovers, son of Gary Shovers of Fox Point and Nancy Strauss of Milwaukee, explained in greater detail from Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi how the military supports its Jewish servicepeople.
“Wherever you are in the military,” he said, “there is a layleader program, which provides a link between the Jewish community and enlisted personnel on base. There is no Jewish chaplain here in Mississippi, but the layleader tells us when services are held in the surrounding community and we can go to them.”
Shovers’ father, Gary, said that “everyone respects Jacob. He was not singled out or teased in any way that he’s Jewish. During his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, a Jewish chaplain held services on Sundays, and about 20-25 men and women would attend.”
“Of course I worry about him,” the elder Shovers admitted. “I pray for him and I know that the U.S. military takes care of its people. But I also worry about driving on the freeway in Milwaukee.”
Jacob, a 2002 Nicolet grad and Eagle Scout, said that joining the military was a natural step for him that will provide him with a college degree in network administration and “six years of training.”
He said that the war “concerned me at first, since my job [to set up communications and support command staff] is one of the forward deploying jobs and often targeted in battle. But the chance that I will go is not that high. If the war is going on in another five months, I’ll start getting concerned. But I’ll go where they need me.”
His best friends from Nicolet are all in the military and “have been shipped out,” he said. “We’re the ‘crazy’ proud ones. We know what we want to do [in serving our country], and we aren’t afraid to go out and do it.”
As Captain Lowe, whose father was a captain in the Air Force in Vietnam, said, “If it wasn’t for military people in the history of the United States, we may not have had the liberties we all enjoy now. That’s something I would like you to put in your article.”
(West Point graduate and Second Lieutenant Andy Gordon, son of Bonnie and Paul Gordon of Milwaukee, is serving in Iraq with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division.
Unfortunately, we were unable to speak with his family before press time. If other members of the community wish to participate in a follow-up article on those who serve, please contact this writer at vivianr@milwaukeejewish.org.)
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