High Life: A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : Strong Ties : Foster Family Copes With Brothers’ Military Tradition

Foothill High School varsity quarterback Tim Chaix, 16, says the ups and downs of last year’s football season pale in comparison to the emotions he’s feeling for his three older brothers.

With two serving in the Army--stationed in the Persian Gulf--and the other stateside in the Air Force, Tim and his family spend much of their time “glued to the television.”

“The television is really our family’s only source of information, just as it is for everybody else,” said Tim, a sophomore. “The President doesn’t personally call us with updates concerning the war’s progress just because some of our family members are soldiers.”

His brothers--Bill, John and Walter--are continuing a family military tradition, but it’s not the Chaix family’s. The three brothers had resided as foster children with the Chaixes for nearly 20 years, after the death of their natural father, Walter Shank Jr., who died of cancer just before retiring from the Air Force. Shank had served a year in Vietnam.

Joining the Army shortly after graduating from Foothill in 1987, Bill Shank, 22, has served for three years.

“We encouraged it (military service) because we felt that it would be a good opportunity to learn a trade,” said Linda Chaix, the three men’s foster mother.

“When Bill first entered the military, our family didn’t anticipate war,” said Roger Chaix, their foster father. “We thought it would be a great adventure.”

But within weeks of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August, Bill Shank was shipped from Georgia to the Middle East. He is stationed on the Saudi Arabia-Kuwait border, his responsibility to help retrieve mechanically inoperable tanks and rebuild them.

Walter Shank, 25 and a 1984 graduate of Mater Dei High School, joined the Army one year ago. He had been stationed in Germany since February, 1990, but left for the Persian Gulf in December. He is stationed near the Saudi Arabia capital city of Riyadh, helping to transport troops and supplies as a truck driver.

“His position has become a high risk,” Tim said. “Saddam (Hussein) has fired missiles directly into the capital near Walter’s location. This is a threat to my brother.”

John, Bill Shank’s twin, is stationed at Great Falls, Mont., where he serves in the Air Force. He has been trained to use radar to detect enemy aircraft and then warn U.S. pilots.

Said 19-year-old sister Stephanie Chaix, a 1989 graduate of Foothill and a sophomore at Orange Coast College: “Things are going successfully for the United States in general, but there’s always personal concern for Bill and Walter. I have faith in my brothers, knowing that they can fend for themselves. But in that kind of situation, anything can happen.”

Having members in the military has meant the Chaix family not only lives with day-to-day concerns but is also affected by the public’s feelings about the war.

“The thing I hate to see is protests at colleges,” Tim said. “I think President Bush and our allied countries are doing their best. I just don’t like seeing people just sitting there yelling, ‘We want peace!’ I wish they would put themselves in the President’s shoes. It’s kind of hard when you possess that much power to do things to please everyone. You have to do what you think is best.”

“Most people at Foothill think the whole war is for oil,” he said. “And they are wrong.”

Little sister Heather Chaix, 12, and a seventh-grader at St. Jeanne de Lestonnac, a private school in Tustin, said she feels frustration toward classmates over the war.

“I’m mostly down all the time,” she said. “I worry about them (my brothers) a lot. The boys in my class say things about the Middle East and the war, things I don’t like that much.”

“I used to have military interests in flying planes, but during the last couple of years, it has dwindled,” Tim said. “The interest is still there a little, even since the war began, but I don’t want to fight.

“Personally, I think war is a bad thing, but there’s no other way sometimes. I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.”