A Town Called to Duty

For four years, Matt Tracy spent his days pumping gas and repairing car engines at Mark LaRose’s Texaco on Main Street. At night, the 33-year-old father of two studied law. He fended off frequent entreaties from military recruiters and held fast to his dream of becoming a litigator.

Then in December, LaRose was called up for active duty, along with the entire National Guard unit in this remote, rural town of 1,473. The deployment of 88 men in Company B, 1st Battalion, 172nd Armor Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division -- better known as Bravo Company -- has touched just about everyone in the area.

For Tracy, it meant his plans to exchange his wrench for an attache case went on hold.

“Right now I am just going to be a well-educated mechanic,” he said, his voice devoid of any emotion beyond simple resignation. “There is a point where you just have to accept it. What Mark has to do over there is much worse and much more of a sacrifice than whatever I have to give up here.”

Two years into the war, many Americans have become numb to the conflict in Iraq. Though the war is a nightly news event, it is far away and is beyond any individual’s control. But in this small Vermont town, the war could not be more personal.

Town meetings now take place without Selectman Brian Westcom, who also is the road commissioner. Chris Beaudry, who works for the state highway department, was not around to clear the roads during an especially snowy winter. Firefighter Shawn Blake is gone along with LaRose, the service station owner who also is the volunteer fire chief.

Dennis Sheridan will not be coaching soccer at the junior high his son Tyler attends, and the school does not know who will replace him. Jimmy Gleason, a school bus driver who also maintained the fleet, is absent. The hunter safety class held twice a year by Eric Chates -- who also works as the mechanic for the Enosburg Armory -- has been canceled.

Each day brings new evidence of the men’s absence: Wives attend social functions alone. Children send sports scores by e-mail to fathers who never missed a game until now. Elderly parents arrange rides to doctors’ appointments because their sons are not there to drive them.

Businesses are stretched thin. Matt Tracy says his workload at LaRose Texaco has tripled. Tammie Randall, hired strictly to pump gas, keeps the books, handles the payroll and washes the service vehicles.

Five of the 98 employees at Blue Seal Feeds are gone. An electric candle glows in their honor at the main entrance to the grain and animal feed company, and five enormous yellow ribbons hang from a six-story silo.

“Everyone is working extra hard, and we have gone to a temp agency to try to fill the vacancies,” said plant manager Paul Adamczak. “It affects us because we have lost people with years of experience. You can’t replace that. We have lost skill, not just employees.”

Adamczak’s son, Mike, 33, was among the plant workers deployed.

Like the town, the father remains stoic. “We’re Vermonters,” Adamczak said. “We’re not the great vocal communicators. This is something you think about, something you feel every day -- but something you don’t say anything about.”

Quietly, neighbors pitch in to help the families of those who have left. Donna Magnant, a first-grade teacher’s aide whose husband, Raymond, and son Jon were deployed, said the snow on her driveway and walkway seemed to magically disappear all winter, as friends dropped by to shovel and plow.

The Magnants were engaged to be married when Raymond went to Vietnam with the Army almost 40 years ago, right out of high school. Both have lived in Enosburg Falls their entire lives.

“Neither one of us, I am sure, thought we would have to face something like this again,” said Magnant, 58.

All 63 assigned members of Bravo Company are in Iraq. Of the 25 support soldiers attached to the unit, most are training at Camp Shelby, Miss., and will head to the Middle East soon; a handful found they had medical conditions that prevented them from serving overseas. The unit is scheduled to be gone for 18 months. Though women have belonged to the unit in the past, Bravo Company is all male at this time.

Bravo Company joined about 1,400 other members of the Vermont Guard who had been called up in recent months, nearly half the state’s roster -- making Vermont second only to Hawaii in the per capita call-up of guardsmen. The Hawaiian units, however, include people from other states. The Vermont guardsmen come from their home state.

The average age of the men deployed from Bravo Company is 40, but some are old enough to have grandchildren. At least a third have served in the Guard for 20 years or more.

Answering the call of their country is something people in Enosburg Falls do, not something they question. If there is opposition to the war, people keep it to themselves, deferring to the prevailing sentiment of patriotism.

“Most people around here would go if they were asked,” said Steve Tracy, who works at Blue Seal Feeds. “Basically, it is how we were brought up.”

Tracy, 55 -- no relation to Matt Tracy -- has five family members in the Guard: two sons, a nephew, a son-in-law and a brother-in-law.

“It has just become our community’s price for the way we live,” said Adamczak, his boss. “If you look at it any other way, you are kidding yourself. Nobody is going to protect our lifestyle if we don’t do it. This is a necessary, continuing commitment.”

As teller Jeannie West cashes paychecks and processes mortgage payments at Merchants Bank on Main Street, she glances at a snapshot thumbtacked to her work station. It shows four men in camouflage -- all family members who have been called up. The last to be summoned was her son Joshua, 22, who left college in nearby Burlington when he was sent to Iraq in January.

West, 49, considers it an honor when customers ask about her son, and tell her they are proud that a boy from Enosburg Falls is representing the United States in Iraq.

“I could not imagine living somewhere where people did not feel like this,” she said.

Still, West said: “The town seems sadder because everybody talks about the guys who are gone. Everyone here went to school with somebody in the Guard. Everybody knows someone. Everyone is connected, somehow, to someone who is over there.”

As their fathers and grandfathers did, many young people here enlist in the military straight out of high school. When they return home, they often join the Guard -- signing up for extra income, and for an opportunity to continue to serve.

Edward Grossman, principal of Enosburg Falls High School, said support for the military effort was so strong that when he surveyed his 375 students about starting an ROTC program, half said they wanted one. The program will begin in the fall.

When Bravo Company was deployed from St. Albans in December, the students pressed so hard to see the ceremony that Grossman arranged for a live broadcast in the school auditorium. As cameras panned on the unit, Grossman, 55, heard squeals of recognition: “There’s my cousin!” “There’s my brother!” “There’s my dad!”

Enosburg Falls nestles in low hills in northwestern Vermont, 10 miles from the Canadian border. Most of the town was built in the 19th century, starting when the first dairy farm was settled in 1806. In a quarter-mile commercial district, Radio Shack and the Family Dollar store stand out as franchises among locally owned enterprises like Leon’s Kitchen.

There is almost 100% employment. Three-quarters of the population graduates from high school, going on to earn an average annual income of $32,000. They are laborers at the feed company and a pulp mill. They drive trucks. They are mechanics, cashiers and office workers. Many work on dairy farms. Some have jobs at an IBM plant 45 minutes away.

Enosburg Falls is surrounded by villages, bringing the population of the region residents refer to as Enosburg to about 2,500.

The area’s uncommon stability has helped it withstand the loss of the guardsmen. But there are signs everywhere that the men are not forgotten.

Yellow ribbons cling to door knockers, lampposts and bay windows. Nine houses on Duffy Hill, a 1 1/2 -mile road, are draped with blue-star banners, indicating a soldier on active duty. A nearby trailer boasts a sign: “Gone to Iraq, Be Back in 18 Months.”

Jars filled with pennies, nickels and dimes sit on office counters. The coins pay for postage to send goodie boxes to the guardsmen. Cars and pickups sport magnets honoring Bravo Company. A busy local restaurant, the Abbey, offers 50% discounts to Guard families.

Every other Saturday, Lise Gates, 50, turns her arcade and bowling alley over to children of the guardsmen so their mothers can have a break. Gates, who has no relatives in Bravo Company, e-mails photographs of the kids at play to their dads.

They thank her and she wonders why.

“Why thank me, when they’re the ones putting their lives on the line so we can be safe?” Gates said. “I think a majority of them wanted to go because they felt if they didn’t, a war was going to happen right here. A lot of us here feel that way.”

The elementary school started its own support group for Guard children. An English teacher at Enosburg Falls High assigned her students to write an essay comparing a recent graduate -- who has served twice in Iraq -- to Beowulf, a great Scandinavian warrior from the 6th century. The graduate, Ben Pathode, has two brothers at the school.

School secretary Debbie Shover’s 22-year-old nephew is in Iraq. Shover, 50, said that since the guardsmen shipped out townspeople thought in terms of days, not months or years.

Enosburg Falls, she said, has unofficially adopted a new way of telling time. “Now, today, another day we can mark off. And then, when they come home. Nothing in between.”

When a fire broke out on Main Street one cold night in February, the guardsmen’s absence seemed more glaring than usual. The blaze demolished an entire block of eight apartments and five businesses -- among them, a furniture company.

Firefighters converged from as far as Quebec. But LaRose, the volunteer fire captain, was missing. LaRose, 49, Bravo Company’s command sergeant major, is known for his ability to take charge in an emergency. He joined the Guard almost 30 years ago.

“We put the fire out,” said Town Administrator Harold Foote. “But we really missed him.”

Foote, 49, said he was worried about what would happen when the spring floods started. In the past, the Guard unit stacked sandbags to halt onrushing waters. The June Dairy Festival -- the town’s biggest event of the year -- also concerns him, because guardsmen traditionally manage the crowds and traffic.

“It sounds like small things, but it really confuses a community when you are used to relying on a group of guys like this,” Foote said. “And we haven’t gone through a whole year’s cycle yet.”

LaRose’s gas station, with its big red Texaco star sign, is a local landmark -- the only service station for miles where customers can still get their gas pumped and their windshields cleaned without getting out of their cars.

“Mark kept it like that, religiously,” Matt Tracy said. He has vowed to maintain his boss’ high service standards: “It is our responsibility to keep it like that until he gets back.”

Tracy said he and his boss used to confer on minor problems and emergencies alike. Now he has no one to turn to. “Mark was a leader,” he said, “not just with the National Guard or the fire department. He was my leader too.”

As he tries to make the right decisions, Tracy asks himself: What would Mark do?

Until now, Tracy said, he never realized how one man’s absence could make such a difference.