Critically Ill Baby’s Mom Soldiers On

Marine Corps Maj. Hal Sellers had a legitimate excuse to stay behind when his battalion was deployed to the Middle East last month: His newborn son had been diagnosed with a rare heart disorder that requires a heart transplant for the infant to survive.

The corps gave Sellers the option to trade his combat role for a desk job that would keep him close to his home in the military community of Twentynine Palms. Sellers, 37, and his wife, Betsy, agonized over the decision, and ultimately the Marine decided his place was alongside his men on a desert battleground, half a world away.

Sellers’ wife, now caring for two other sons, both in grade school, while praying for a heart donor for her 4-month-old, Dillon, concedes that her husband’s decision was hard for her to understand. But she said she supports his choice.

“He just felt a duty and sense of responsibility to his Marines,” Betsy Sellers said in a telephone interview after a recent visit to her ailing son at Loma Linda University Medical Center.

As the nation prepares for a possible strike on Iraq amid mixed public sentiment, Marine Corps representatives say Sellers’ decision is the ultimate example of the devotion many soldiers have to their country and their mission.

“It’s a situation that none of us would want to be in, but it reveals in a very salient way how service to country involves sacrifice,” said Capt. Robert Crum, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, a city of about 26,000 people in the southern Mojave Desert.

Crum said the desk-job option the Marines gave Sellers was “rare, but not unprecedented.” A unit commander always has the power to transfer a corps member if his or her well-being is at stake, as long as such a move would not jeopardize the group’s mission, he noted.

Dillon was born Oct. 19. Ten days later, doctors diagnosed him with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which means his heart is underdeveloped and unable to pump enough blood. Only a heart transplant can save Dillon’s life, said Armando Deamaya, heart transplant coordinator for the medical center.

He said Dillon is in critical condition, kept alive with a ventilator. “Without life support, he would not be with us right now,” he added.

Without a transplant, Deamaya said, Dillon’s life expectancy is “days to weeks.”

Hal Sellers joined his troops, the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, when they were deployed Feb. 21. Sellers is the battalion’s executive officer, and thus the second in command, Crum said.

The major has trained with the 700-member unit since July and felt his absence would weaken the battalion, said Betsy Sellers: “I support his decision, his commitment to his country.”

Not everyone agrees. Hal Sellers’ story appeared recently in a newspaper in his home state, Iowa. At least one reader wrote to the paper criticizing the father for leaving his ailing son, noting that Marines live by the credo, “No one gets left behind.”

Betsy Sellers said she heard about the letter, but doesn’t let it bother her.

“Some people don’t understand,” she said.

She said her older sons, Alex, 8, and Erik, 6, are holding up well, although they’re saddened by the baby’s poor health. Betsy Sellers said she makes the 1 1/2-hour drive from Twentynine Palms to Loma Linda every few days while Alex and Erik are in school. On Sundays, the two go with their mother to visit Dillon, whose hospital room is decorated with a stuffed Marine bulldog and a uniform patch from his father’s battalion, known as the “Wolf Pack.”

If a heart donor is found, Betsy Sellers said, her husband probably won’t learn about it until after the transplant because it takes the Red Cross about 24 hours to get a message to soldiers in the Middle East. Any decision to return Hal Sellers to his family would be in the hands of Marine commanders in the Middle East, Crum said.

Betsy Sellers has not had to endure this ordeal alone. Her husband’s family and the wives of other Marines on the base have been very supportive, she said. The wives -- working through the Marine Corps Key Volunteer program -- have offered to baby-sit her sons, cook meals and visit to keep her company.

“The moral support, the baby-sitting, all of that is just because of the tight-knit group of wives that we have here,” said Alison Clardy, the wife of a Marine and a family friend.

Betsy Sellers said she last heard from her husband Sunday, when he called her at home. He was not permitted to tell her where he was.

He spoke briefly to his two older boys and then asked his wife to relay a message to Dillon: “Daddy loves you.”