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MOTHERS IN ARMS
Cindy Sheehan is not the only mother to lose a son in Iraq. Three local moms share her pain. But they draw the line on her politics.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
By Meghan Gordon
St. Tammany bureau
Lisa Kirk buried her son, a Marine, in December. Ann Comeaux got the terrible news from the Louisiana National Guard in January. Denise Godbolt's life almost stopped in March.
They know the depths of grief to which a child's death can plunge a mother. And like Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who took up a vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch, each knows how a war half a world away can crash down on her doorstep.
While Sheehan's extended camp-out in Crawford, Texas, continues to fuel pundits' praise and scorn, the three Louisiana mothers largely have ignored the squawking talk-show hosts and 24-hour updatesfrom Camp Casey, as Sheehan's encampment has become known. They carry on with their far more private lives and speak in tones less certain than those of the antiwar protesters demanding President Bush bring all U.S. troops home.
Without exception, they never stray far in their comments about the war from the fact that their sons believed in their missions and understood the risks.
"The thing that I can't doubt is his commitment to what he was doing," Lisa Kirk said of her son, Sgt. Jeffrey Lynn Kirk.
In contrast to Sheehan's pronouncements that her son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, 24, was "murdered" in a war started by a "liar" and "filth-spewer," Kirk takes a decidedly measured approach to the global politics that led to her 24-year-old son's death. She said no one, not even the country's decision-makers, knows whether the war's final outcome will be for the better. But she remains hopeful it will.
"I'm sure that innocent people have been hurt because of the decisions. My son was one of them," said Kirk, who lives in Abita Springs. "Some good will suffer for the benefit of the whole. And some decisions will definitely be wrong. We can't know of the outcome. It's not a pretty thing. . . . It's a helpless feeling to not know."
Kirk's son died Dec. 12 in Al Anbar province, during his second tour in Iraq. Jeffrey Lynn Kirk took pleasure in the gratitude Iraqis expressed to him, through invitations to tea and warm conversations through translators.
Lisa Kirk looked to accounts of those moments in her son's letters when reaching her decision to support the troops now and ask questions about the war's underlying motives and mistakes later. What's done is done, she said, and the heat of the battle is no time for protests and counter-protests.
"We will be all the better if we can rid the world of the idea of tolerance for terrorists and brutal dictatorship," Kirk said. "Democracy may not be their answer. These aren't the only two alternatives. But I feel that the brutality forced upon them and the terrorists' acts forced upon us are cause for action. This is what my son taught me. This is all I know about politics."
Despite their differing views, Kirk holds no disdain for Sheehan.
"If this mother is detrimental to our mission there, or if she is mistaken about things, she's the last one to be judged," Kirk said.
Steadfast supporter
It's no wonder Ann Comeaux, 60, of Houma didn't recognize Sheehan's name or her list of demands that were the top story on some talk radio and cable television news programs for the past two weeks. Comeaux walks out of the room when she hears someone criticizing the war effort.
Her son, Sgt. 1st Class Kurt Comeaux, 34, didn't have to risk his life in a war zone. Diagnosed with cancer during basic training, he had a free pass on the obligations he made when he enlisted. He didn't take it.
On Jan. 6, Comeaux was one of six Louisiana National Guardsmen who died in a roadside bomb while on patrol outside Baghdad.
Because of her son's determination, Ann Comeaux said, she will support the war, however long it takes. Nevertheless, she admits she's unaware of all the factors that sent troops into war and those that will determine when troops pull out.
"We've got to hope and pray that they know when to stop it, because I wouldn't want any of our soldiers to die if they don't have to," Comeaux said. "We have to trust that they're doing the right things."
So she sticks to doing what she knows: comforting newly grieving parents by driving up to two hours to their children's funerals, and writing sympathy letters to as far away as Ohio to thank other parents for their soldiers' lives. She has dealt with her pain, she said, and she's ready to help other military parents who live in daily fear of receiving the same news about their children.
Comeaux cast those actions as her way of putting away the pain of her son's death, but she doesn't criticize Sheehan for taking a markedly different path to repairing her own life.
"I understand her logic; I understand her pain," Comeaux said. "But in another way, I couldn't do that with my son's memory. Because he chose to do this. I mean, he didn't choose to die, but he chose to defend our country."
Conspicuous pride
Denise Godbolt, 47, shook off a dark cloud of despair just weeks after a Baghdad suicide bomber killed her 23-year-old son, Louisiana National Guard Sgt. Lee Godbolt, on March 26. She traveled to the five states where he trained and relished the ceremonies that paid him tribute. Strangers called in their thanks and sent letters to her apartment in New Orleans' lower 9th Ward.
Unlike other parents who closed off the public attention, Godbolt embraced it. She saved every program that mentioned her son and every knickknack that support groups sent her, including a candle decorated with doves, a charm bracelet with Lee's name and a card previewing a "Freedom Quilt" made with his image.
"This is history, and my son is part of history," she said, smiling while she thumbed through the table covered with memorabilia. "Do you know how that makes me feel?"
The obvious awe Godbolt has for her son naturally colors her views on the war.
She said Lee Godbolt kept the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the back of his mind when he needed motivation in Iraq. She said it's now her duty to take up his views and support a war that he saw as way to stamp out terrorism and a guarantee that al-Qaeda doesn't unleash another attack on America.
"We took a heavy hit there, you know?" she said. "That affected everybody in the U.S.A. So while we're out there blaming Bush, cutting up, spending all your life in misery, they're plotting on how they're going to come back and get us again. We've got to watch that. My son is a soldier and a hero, and I'm a soldier's mother, and I'm standing for a good cause: what my son believed in.
"I'm going to go to my grave standing for what he believed in. That's what mamas do when their little soldiers go away to war."
Godbolt had the harshest comments about Sheehan but surmised her words against the war are rooted in a terrible pain. Godbolt said she wants to ask Sheehan whether she thinks her son would be proud of her protests.
"He would say, 'Why is my mom doing this?' " Godbolt said. " 'This is what I chose to do. I want her to be happy.' . . . When they're over there, they are family. So why can't we be family when one falls, and get closer? That's what our boys would want. They're together up there. Why can't we be together here?"
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Meghan Gordon can be reached at
mgordon@timespicayune.com or (985) 898-4827.
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