For Town’s Kids, Standoff Is Never-Ending Scare Story

A Saturday afternoon of birthing calves on a remote ranch on the snow-draped central Montana plains had given sway to moonlight, and 10-year-old Travis Scharen was preparing for dinner with his family.

It did not take long before family chitchat turned to the sinister note that has dominated this dot on the map since the standoff between federal officials and members of the “freemen” began a week ago, drawing more than 100 law enforcement officers and swarms of news reporters.

“I’m worried about going to school on Monday,” Travis said before sipping his orange juice and pausing quietly. “The freemen could hijack our bus and drive us to some secret place.”

“I’ll tell you what: If Sunday night there’s some gun-toting idiots in town,” said his 29-year-old mother, Marie, “you’re not going to school. Period.”

Similar conversations were taking place at many dinner tables in a community that for decades was an obscure hamlet of ranching families--and would dearly love to be one again. For the children who reside in this isolated Garfield County seat, the standoff 36 miles up the road is a scare story that seems to go on and on.

Six-year-old Chrissy Pluhar said she worries that FBI agents are going to invade the Jordan Elementary School grounds, “put guns to our heads and make us pay taxes.” Seven-year-old Bunky Cornett, who recently woke up screaming, “Mommy, the freemen are coming to get me!” said: “I’m afraid I’m going to get shot! The freemen have guns!”

Some children have stayed glued to the TV, flipping from one news show to another, desperate for information. One teacher said a second-grader asked if he could “write a letter to all the parents in town warning them that it is not a good idea to leave kids unsupervised.”

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For the children of some families in the region, Jordan is now off limits. Barry Von Wagner, pastor at the Assembly of God Church in Jordan, said parents in Sidney, 140 miles away, decided against having their children bused to a youth rally at his church over the weekend.

But local children cannot avoid the tension in town.

As he talked about the situation with his family, Travis, a freckle-faced boy with short-cropped brown hair who herds cows on horseback and shoots like a marksman, turned to his mother’s fiance, 28-year-old cow-boss Monte Haas, and said: “Monte, I can do most anything you want me to do on this ranch. But what do I do if someone points a loaded gun at me in town?”

“Well, T-man,” Monte said, “you’re gonna have to pray for help.”

Tom Peterson, a clinical psychologist with offices in Miles City and Billings, said that “in this case, there are no good answers anyone can give these children, except assurances.”

“This exceeds all normal experience. It is as if they are in a bad dream and can’t get out of it,” he said. “So they watch television, thinking that if they watch enough of it they’ll understand what’s going on, like breaking in a horse’s saddle.”

For months, these children have listened to parents and relatives talk about the threats that freemen have made against local officials, and to the wildly exaggerated tales of classmates. They have heard reports of militiamen poised to invade the town, and stories comparing this standoff to the sieges that preceded the Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho, tragedies.

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In a county of 1,500 people nearly 100 miles from the nearest major highway, they now have also seen neighbors confronted by federal agents at roadblocks, and once close-knit families split over if what the freemen are doing is right or wrong, aggressive or defensive.

“It’s a tough situation, because kids are a product of what they hear in the streets and in their homes,” said Gordy Jackson, a child counselor in Miles City, 84 miles south of Jordan. “Now the whole town is splintered. You’re not going to find anyone there who is neutral.”

Apart from the acrimonious politics of the standoff, some residents are devising protective measures. Ruby Cornett, 37, plans to “throw the kids in the car and get the hell out of Jordan at the first inkling that trouble is heading our way.

“If I even think it’s coming close--we’re gone,” said Cornett, who manages a motel here. “Every time my kids hear something on the radio about all this, they freak. Bunky comes in running, saying: ‘Mom! They’re coming! Let’s go!’ ”

In the meantime, Cornett has approached FBI agents lodging at her motel about the prospects of having one of them go to Jordan Elementary School “and personally tell the kids that nothing is going to happen to them.”

“These kids are scared to death, and I think an FBI agent on school grounds might relieve some of the stress,” she said. Short of that, “we’ll have to do the best we can.”

For Cornett’s 11-year-old daughter, Darna, that means “looking around for strange people when I’m walking to the playground.”

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Travis also studies pickups and cars that cruise by the school.

“That’s why I’m worried about going to school on Monday,” he said, checking heifers under moonlit skies for signs of calving. “A freeman could be inside any one of those trucks.”

Freeman Lyle Chamberlin of Winnett, Mont., argued, however, that “as far as children being scared of freemen, they shouldn’t be, because they darn sure ain’t hurt kids.”

“And don’t forget, the children on the other side of this issue are living in the same fear,” he said. “They don’t understand either. They also want to know what’s going on.”

Psychologist Peterson would agree with that.

“If something horrendous does happen--God forbid--we’ll have a bunch of kids who will be traumatized,” he said. “That’s why we need to be helping them get a better understanding of what is going on. And if this goes on much longer, we need to reassure them that there is some control.”