Alone--But Not Really <i> Alone</i> : Military: Spouses of Marines deployed in the Persian Gulf draw upon a wealth of support services to help them cope.

The news that threw Rebecca Meadows’ life helter-skelter came in a telephone call on Aug. 18. Her husband of 10 months was being sent to the Persian Gulf.

With just an hour to spare, Gunnery Sgt. Frederick Meadows sat her down in the living room with a shoe box and, for the first time, passed over the reins to their household: bank accounts, power of attorney, will, life insurance policies. That night, the El Toro Marine was gone “like a puff of smoke.”

Now Meadows, 32, is rearing her 7-year-old daughter and 16-year-old stepdaughter alone and trying to get along on a reduced budget. Most of her family is in Illinois, and she expects to spend her birthday, wedding anniversary and Christmas alone.

Lately, Meadows said, she’s been drinking way too much beer, sometimes “a 12-pack at night myself, anything to get me to go to sleep.”

When a co-worker told her that she had better get a grip on herself, Meadows sought psychological counseling at the Family Service Center at the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro. “I’m here every day,” Meadows said tearfully during an interview at the center.

As America’s biggest military deployment since the Vietnam War approaches its third month, the strain is wearing on thousands of Orange County Marine wives, say counselors and workers who provide a vast network of support services for families of El Toro Marines. During a visit to the Marine base Tuesday, Vice President Dan Quayle recognized the burden on Marine families and thanked them for “helping us to keep the peace in the Middle East.”

The Family Service Center is the bedrock of the support network at El Toro, which includes budget counseling, financial assistance, child care, job placement and a highly organized system of wife support groups that each have their own newsletter and answering machine.

Requests for interest-free loans from the Navy Relief Society have doubled since August, as has the number of people seeking other forms of aid. Demand for the assistance of the American Red Cross chapter on base has reportedly doubled as well.

“The suddenness of this deployment has made it different than others where the family has had time to prepare,” said Maj. John L. Sayre, director of the Family Service Center. “But we are here to do all we can for the families at home while the Marine is away. . . . No one is going to go hungry.”

While the precise number of Marine spouses is unknown, base officials say there are several thousand. There are 11,600 Marines normally stationed in Orange County: 7,800 at El Toro and another 3,800 at the Tustin Marine helicopter base, where family support services are provided on a smaller scale. Marine families can seek help at either air station.

Marines routinely serve six-month tours of duty abroad, and the Marine Corps works with families up to 90 days in advance planning for the lengthy separations. But the sudden nature of the Persian Gulf deployment, the frightening prospect of combat and not knowing if or when a Marine will return make this a particularly anguished time for the families.

Beyond loneliness, the greatest hardship for the thousands of Marine spouses has been financial.

Most Marines who live off base receive a $173 monthly subsistence allowance, but once deployed, that ends. Wives receive monthly separation pay of about $60. Congress last week approved a monthly $110 eminent danger benefit, but it doesn’t arrive until early October.

More devastating, however, has been the loss of moonlighting wages. Orange County’s housing prices and high cost of living already force a majority of Marines to take second jobs, said Ruth Mushallo, deputy director of the Family Service Center. She estimated that 80% of their wives work too.

“All they know is their husband is gone, they don’t have any money and their kids are driving them crazy,” said Sharon Barrett, chairman of the base’s American Red Cross office, which delivers emergency messages to troops in the Persian Gulf and helps coordinate the wife support groups.

“We’re not talking about $110,” Barrett pointed out Wednesday. “We’re talking about a big chunk of their monthly income when the guy who’s moonlighting is (deployed). It’s like whacking out 30% of your pay overnight.”

Duane E. Newton, executive director of the El Toro base’s Navy Relief Society, a nonprofit organization established to help dependents of Marines and Navy personnel, said the number of applications for interest-free loans and grants has doubled since August. Last year, the El Toro base’s budget for such loans was $800,000, Newton said. This year, he said, “we will easily exceed $1 million.”

“They are looking for financial assistance--food, rent, utilities, basic needs, car repair, emergency transportation back home if a family member is seriously ill--that sort of thing,” Newton said.

The Navy Relief Society, funded largely by the payroll-deduction contributions of Marines, also stocks a food “locker” from which families in dire need can receive two days’ worth of nonperishable staples. It isn’t gourmet: macaroni and cheese, canned vegetables, applesauce, dish soap, perhaps baby food.

Not every mother, of course, is in crisis, said Raphael Cardenas, director of the base’s Family Advocacy Program. Many mothers are coping quite well and drop by his office with questions “just to make sure they’re doing the right thing.” This concern, he said, helps explain the tripling of enrollment in the Family Service Center’s parenting classes.

Since the Persian Gulf crisis erupted, self-help groups on base have become instrumental.

Family Action Contact teams, established to help Marine dependents prepare for scheduled and routine deployments, have multiplied from three to 27 since August. There are 50 to 200 wives per group, and each has a telephone network for checking on each other and dispensing news and information about troops.

The groups have picnics together. They keep an answering machine at their squadron headquarters. And they circulate newsletters, usually named after the squadron they represent. For instance, Tustin’s Red Lion helicopter squadron calls its newsletter the Red Lion Inquirer. It features tips on what wives should do before their husbands are deployed; phone numbers for chaplains and the base’s legal and insurance offices; even an advice column called “Dear Flabby.”

Gerald Cook, a Missouri Southern Baptist minister and deputy command chaplain for the El Toro base, said he sees distressed wives of many denominations, from Roman Catholic to Buddhist. Since August, he said, the one trouble they share is financial pressure. He encourages them to write, saying that daily letters are therapeutic and that regular communication with a spouse is important.

But, he said, that’s hard to do when the women are often working not one but now two jobs, plus raising their kids alone.

“I’ve talked with two wives this week that already have two jobs each. And their husbands had a second job. So where they had a total of four jobs, they have now lost one. So that’s a whole lot of what we are contending with here,” Cook said.

“The car breaks down, the washing machine stops, the kids get sick, the dog needs a bath, everything goes wrong two days after the guy leaves. . . . It’s hard to do it all alone too.”