While in Kuwait and Iraq, Spc. Tracy Murray has missed almost a third of his daughter's life and the beginning of his son's life.
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The mechanic from the Army Reserve's 319th Transportation Company and his wife, Khristy, have two children - daughter Tianna, 19 months, and son Christopher, who was born April 20. Spc. Murray didn't learn of his son's birth until April 21, when he called his wife to check on her. Her mother answered the phone and said she was in the hospital.
Spc. Murray, 29, has also missed Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day and his wife's birthday, and next week he'll be away for his own birthday.
Today, Memorial Day, will be just one more holiday spent without his family. Mrs. Murray, 28, said if he were home, the four of them would probably have a cookout and head down to the river. With him gone, she's not making any plans.
For those left behind by 319th soldiers who went to war, Memorial Day will be less about remembrance and more about absence. The working-class men and women have wives, husbands, children and parents who need them, and the day off from work was usually spent with their families. This year, there will be empty chairs at cookouts.
Spc. Murray called his home from Camp Coyote, Kuwait, on a cell phone Wednesday. He said the rumor going around the 319th is that they'll be home by July. They have finished working for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, whose fuel they hauled during the war in Iraq.
"I miss them so much," Spc. Murray said of his family. "I'm so ready to come home."
The new baby Mrs. Murray said a call from her husband might have been what sent her into labor.
Spc. Murray had called their home in Hephzibah at 2 a.m. to check on her, and as soon as she hung up, her pains started.
"I must have jumped out of bed too fast to answer the phone," Mrs. Murray said. "I knew it was him. He's the only one who calls that late."
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Spc. Darrell Wright sits on his cot at Camp Coyote in Kuwait before the start of the war in Iraq. Spc. Wright arrived home May 19 to be with his ailing father.
JOHNNY EDWARDS/FILE
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Mrs. Murray's mother, her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law stood in for her husband in the birthing room.
Her family and her husband's family have helped her care for the new baby and Tianna during the past month, and helped her keep the home clean and the yard trimmed.
It might get tougher when Mrs. Murray goes back to work at the SRP Federal Credit Union in June. She misses having Spc. Murray around to help with family decisions. She also doesn't like his being separated from his daughter.
Spc. Murray left for Kuwait in November, part of a group of 20 soldiers who went overseas before the rest of the unit left in February. He mailed back videotapes of himself soon after he landed in Kuwait.
"She says 'Daddy' when she sees him on the picture," Mrs. Murray said of Tianna. "I'm waiting to see her reaction when he gets back."
A dying father Terry Wright had just finished saying how Memorial Day wouldn't mean anything without her husband, Spc. Darrell Wright. Then a receptionist at the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs, where she works as an administrative assistant in Columbia, poked her head into the room and said she had a message to pick up a tall, dark and handsome man at Columbia Metropolitan Airport that afternoon.
Mrs. Wright was elated. She had been trying for a week to get her husband home through the Red Cross. Doctors had given his father three to four months to live because of a brain tumor.
"Memorial Day will be fine now," Mrs. Wright, 36, said.
Coming home was bittersweet for Spc. Wright, 37, who arrived in Columbia on May 19.
"It's good, no matter what the situation, to be back in America," he said, "but I'd rather spend a few more weeks over there than have him going through this."
Before he was deployed, Spc. Wright took his father, Thomas Edmund, to and from the doctor's office to pick up medications and to his chemotherapy sessions.
While he was away, his father's condition worsened, and Spc. Wright's sister Molette Sli had to take over caring for him, Mrs. Wright said.
"She needs him right now," Mrs. Wright said of her sister-in-law. "She can't do it alone."
Two toddlers Since her daughter Pfc. Ebony Williams deployed to the war, Shirley Williams has had her hands full with her two grandsons, Calvin, who turns 3 in July, and Xavier, 1.
She says they're both well-behaved boys, which has made caring for two toddlers not as bad as it could be. At 54, Mrs. Williams and her husband, James, are doing the work of full-time parents again, taking the boys to and from day care, keeping them fed and clothed and keeping them from breaking figurines, rough-housing or hitting each other.
She has worried a lot about her daughter.
"I'll be so glad when she gets home," Mrs. Williams said. "When the war first started, I lost many nights sleeping."
Pfc. Williams, 24, lived with her parents in their double-wide trailer in Aiken before she left, working at Popeye's in New Ellenton. The boys' father takes them every other weekend.
Mrs. Williams said it was tough on Calvin, nicknamed "Mookie," when his mother went away. He would push the door of her room open and say, "Mama," and he cried at night.
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Shirley Williams has been caring for her grandsons Xavier, 1, and Calvin, 2, since their mother, Pfc. Ebony Williams, left with the 319th to fight in Iraq.
TREVOR FREY/STAFF
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When someone asks him where his mother is, Calvin says, "Work."
Pfc. Williams missed her younger son's first birthday, his first steps and his first words. Xavier points to a picture on the wall of his mother in her Army uniform and says, "Mama."
Pfc. Williams called Wednesday and heard him say a few words, Mrs. Williams said.
"She got so excited," Mrs. Williams said. "She couldn't believe it.
"Now we're just hoping she'll be home in time for Mookie's birthday."
Reach Johnny Edwards at (706) 823-3225 or johnny.edwards@augustachronicle.com.
