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Sheriff requests investigation into allegations
against him
Who loves Erin?
Dundee dentist
searches out game instead of cavities
| While
mom fights in Iraq |
A Newberg boy celebrates his second birthday
without his mother, an MP serving overseas |
By Gunnar
Olson, Newberg
Graphic reporter
E-mail Schellene at sclendenin@eaglenewspapers.com
|
Little Corey Campbell made his entrance into the kitchen. It was his
day. Everyone in the room was there on a Saturday to celebrate his second birthday, and
they were all looking at him.
Corey is small, even for a boy who just Tuesday turned 2 years old. He has little or no
baby fat, and atop his head is a tuft of sandy blonde hair. For his party on Saturday he
was dressed in blue denim overalls over a white T-shirt.
Gathered in Renae and Steve Heineck’s house were the friends of
Corey’s mother, Amé Campbell, as well as their children. Red, white and blue
streamers were hanging from the ceiling in the Heineck’s kitchen. They weren’t
hanging in Amé’s kitchen because Amé is in Iraq.
The first thing he did when he saw a reporter at his party was he walked up
and hugged his legs; a man he’d never seen before. It’s only brought up because
it reveals a characteristic of Corey’s, and the significance it plays in his story.
Renae said it was important the story be told, because too often people
forget the men and women of the U.S. military serving in Iraq, and how it affects their
friends and families back home daily. The Heinecks, of Newberg, are reminded daily,
because they’re caring for their friend’s son.
Amé’s a member of the military police, has been for nearly all of her
16 and a half years of service. She enlisted in the Army right out of high school, in
1987, and is now three and one-half years shy of retirement.
Amé has been stationed in the war-torn country since early March. For the
first two months of her deployment she was a platoon sergeant with the military police
unit of 411th Company, and responsible for 34 men and women, according to her e-mails.
This was a “line” company, she said.
Line companies “are the ones that go out and conduct the missions,”
she wrote in explanation. She said the company handled such duties as “route recons
... patrol, convoy escorts, raids, enemy prisoner-of-war camp security, among other
things.”
In June she was moved to Headquarters Company, 720th Battalion, where she was
made a noncommissioned officer in charge. There she deals with intelligence.
“That section is responsible for gathering information on the enemy and
the attacks that are going on,” Ame wrote, so as much information as possible can be
given to the line companies before they go out on missions.
When Ame left for Iraq she was expecting a two-week leave, right around the
time of her only son’s second birthday. But that changed when Ame moved to a
different battalion, from a line company to intelligence headquarters.
Ame couldn’t go into detail about her work, but was able to answer
questions by e-mail. Though saddened to hear she wouldn’t be coming home in October,
the news wasn’t all that unexpected.
“You know when you deploy that the times are not always
guaranteed,” Ame wrote. “I knew then that there was a chance that I would be
gone for a year.”
Ame declined to comment on the status of Corey’s father, except to
say he’s a good man and will be a part of his son’s life in the future, but due
to “circumstances” couldn’t care for Corey. Renae said Ame’s parents
were too elderly to care for a toddler, and her brother, who with his wife took care of
Corey the last time Ame was deployed, are expecting a baby soon.
Renae received a phone call from Ame this year, and knew she was about to ask
a big favor.
“I could tell by the tone of her voice,” Renae said. Ame made small
talk, and was obviously skirting around something. “’What’s up,
Ame?,’” Renae said.
Ame laid out all the details, including the possibility that it could be up
to a year before she would be back. A month passed before the Heinecks made a decision.
What it came down to, Steve said, was doing their share for the country.
“She’s over there taking bullets for our freedom; the least we can do is take
her kid,” he explained. “I should say ‘dodging,’” he amended, as
if knocking on wood, and not ‘taking’ bullets.
Ame went to Renae with the favor, she said, because Renae was in a good
position to take Corey — she’s a stay-at-home mom with two kids of her own, ages
2 and 5 — and Renae and her have similar views about raising a child. One value Ame
and the Heinecks have in common is patriotism.
Ame wrote in an e-mail: “Years down the road I hope that Corey will be
proud of me for what I am doing now. I hope to raise him to be kind to others, to never
take for granted what you have, to be proud to live in the United States of America, and
to support your president.”
A body knows the Heinecks are patriotic pulling into their driveway. The
house is hidden behind a hill, but a giant American flag peaks out over the crest of a
berm. Renae said the pole is so gigantic it took a flatbed truck to deliver.
“I know that Renae is taking really good care of him,” Ame wrote,
“and that makes it bearable for me to be away from him and able to concentrate on the
job at hand over here.”
Corey quickly made his way from the feet of the stranger to the lap of one of
his mother’s friend, Kena Kaplan, and began feeding her tortilla chips.
Kaplan would say later of Ame, “God gave her the right kind of baby for
what she’s doing.”
Before Ame flew out to Iraq, she had to hand her baby over to Renae. Ame and
Renae went to high school together. Renae had only met Corey a couple days prior, when she
flew out to where Ame was living in Texas to pick him up.
“It broke my heart to say goodbye to him,” Ame wrote, “and for
a time I wonder if I could live with myself and the way it made me feel.”
Both of them cried at the airport, Renae said, but Corey seemed oblivious to
the outpouring of emotion. On the plane ride home, he wasted no time snuggling in her lap.
At the party, all of the adults in attendance — including Travis Adams,
a mutual friend of Ame’s and Renae’s, who with his wife has baby-sat Corey
before — agreed that Corey was calm and good natured, and good with strangers. Renae
said it would have been that much harder on him, staying at their house for a year without
his mother, if he weren’t open to new people.
The only place one could look into the eyes of his mother at the party was in
the living room; on the table behind the couch was a picture of Ame and Corey, a Christmas
tree in the background. While the glass was clean for the party, Renae said there are
usually smudge marks on it from Corey picking his mother up and kissing her.
As way of making sure he still knew who his mother is, she asked him once,
holding him in one arm in the picture in the other, “Who’s your mommy?” He
choose the picture.
Conversely, the only time Ame gets a look at her boy is when she gets
pictures in the mail. They’re hanging near her cot, she said, so she can look at
Corey while she’s drifting to sleep.
In her final e-mail, Ame wrote: “We will again be together someday as
mother and son and he will look at me with those innocent trusting eyes and raise his
hands up for me to pick him up and hold him and I will let him rest his sweet head on my
shoulder and he will fall asleep while I hold him. I am dreaming about that day.” |
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From Oct. 22,
2003, Newberg Graphic
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