In Iraq, a father-son reunion

Pfc. Logan McGraw said he didn’t notice the man staring at him as he entered Baghdad’s Camp Victory in the early-morning dusk last week.

The Army master sergeant, brimming with a mixture of nervousness, excitement and trepidation, tapped him on the shoulder. “Logan, I am your father,” Master Sgt. William McGraw told his 20-year-old son.

The two had not seen each other since Logan McGraw was 8, and that reunion was only for a fleeting two days. Just long enough for William McGraw to snap a photo of his son that has rested on the mantelpiece of his Atlanta home ever since.

Before that meeting, the last time McGraw had seen his son was when the boy was 6 months old. That was when he and Logan’s mother divorced.

“For whatever reason -- it’s still unknown to me -- his mother decided to go on with her life and move away from me with my son,” William McGraw, 45, said.

His former wife, Sgt. Latara McGraw, who is based in Kentucky, declined an interview request. The couple moved frequently when Logan McGraw was small because of their life in the military.

Three years after Logan McGraw first contacted his father in an e-mail, the two finally reunited in Baghdad amid the sounds of mortar and machine-gun fire.

“Every night, you hear that,” said William McGraw, a graduate of Banning High School in Wilmington.

“Among all that, I have a chance to finally know my son. I’m excited about starting over again. But reality sets in; we know this is a war zone and there are soldiers missing and people dying.” William McGraw has been in Iraq 24 months.

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Growing up without his father, Logan McGraw said he buried his frustration by playing sports.

He spent time in Alaska and Washington and graduated from high school in Wurzburg, Germany, where he was wide receiver on the football team.

Three years ago, just after he enlisted in the Army, carrying on his family’s tradition, he searched for his father’s name on the Internet.

He sifted through all the William McGraws he found, calling each and asking whether he had a son named Logan.

One day he hit pay dirt.

“William hung up and didn’t give him any information,” said Doris McGraw, William McGraw’s mother and a Rancho Dominguez resident. “Then he called me, saying: ‘I just had the strangest phone call. This guy said he was Logan and he left a number.’ ”

“I said, ‘If you truly think it was Logan, you call him back,’ and he did, and it was his son.”

Doris McGraw had 11 other grandchildren, but the one missing always pained her.

“I’m not sure what happened; I guess my son married too young,” she said.

“I knew Logan when he was a tiny baby. Whatever happened, happened. But his mother was an excellent mother. Whenever he would fuss, she would hush him and read to him and he would be quiet and pay attention.”

Doris McGraw had stored newspaper clippings from various conflicts her son had fought in as well as a picture of him with hopes of one day presenting it to her grandson.

For her, it wasn’t whether they would reunite, only a matter of when.

“I always knew I’d give it to him,” she said. “If I didn’t think that, then I wouldn’t have saved it all these years.”

After the call, father and son started trading e-mails and talking on the phone briefly.

“They were always very short conversations,” William McGraw said. “I think it was a little bit of hesitation on both parts. We didn’t know each other. I remembered changing his diapers. And now he’s a man.”

William McGraw enlisted in the Army a month after graduating from Banning High. The career carried him throughout the world -- to Korea, Germany, Somalia and a stint at the Pentagon.

But news that his son had enlisted came with mixed emotions.

“I found out after he joined,” McGraw said. “I have always been proud to defend our country, and now I can say I’m just as proud that he is going to be serving our country. But now, I’m a father and I also have to worry about him and hope he comes home safely.”

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After an embrace, the father and son danced around conversation topics.

The father liked baseball. The son liked football.

It was hard on both. The Army, after learning of the McGraws’ story, had arranged for them to meet. But they had only two days. After that, Logan McGraw’s unit was set to return to Taji, about 20 miles north of Baghdad. And William McGraw was to redeploy to Atlanta this week.

But after a while, their nervousness subsided.

“Of course he has my sense of humor and good looks,” the father joked. “When I look at him, I see me in him, so it made it a lot more comfortable, rather than e-mails with someone you don’t really know.”

They began to talk about each other’s new families. William McGraw had remarried and told his son of his two new sisters and brother.

Logan McGraw, who is seeing his first live action since deploying in April, had recently wed and told his father of his own child, Douyniall, a 2-year-old boy.

“It took a little bit longer than I hoped for,” Logan McGraw said. “But at the end, it came down to having a relationship later down the road and finally being able to communicate with each other.”

The next day they celebrated Logan McGraw’s 21st birthday together.

Father and son stared out at the skies in the warm Baghdad evening, with the father pointing out various constellations.

“I pointed out Venus and we looked at the moon,” William McGraw said. “The stars here are so clear. You can see the same star constellations as in the U.S., but here they look like you can reach up and grab one of them.”

jonathan.abrams@latimes.com