Letters deliver love to soldier, pen pals

It started as a school assignment.

Six-year-old Jannah Lynn was supposed to exchange letters with a soldier in Iraq. But her mom didn’t want the name of any random soldier. So Carol Medvec went to New Wilmington Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania, where she attended services, and asked for a soldier’s name from its pen pal program.

She was given Army Reserve Sgt. Jim Schultz.

“Dear Sgt. Schultz. Hi. You are in Iraq. I want to thank you. You are brave,” Jannah Lynn wrote in November 2006.

“Dear Jannah Lynn, Thank you for writing me. Being a soldier you have to be brave, you have to be strong, there’s time you have to leave your family, but there’s time you get to come back,” he wrote, and included postcards with pictures of Iraq that she could take to class for show and tell.

So began a correspondence with Jannah Lynn that would soon grow to include her four siblings and eventually their mother. And suddenly this soldier was not just serving his country; he was saving a family.

Lonely lives

Thousands of miles away in Iraq, the walls around Schultz’s bunk beds were empty. His buddies had pictures of their wives and children, but 46-year-old Schultz was long divorced with children in their 20s too old to color pictures.

When he returned home from his first tour of duty in 2004, he sat on his duffel bag at the airport and watched the reunions until he was the last one in the parking lot. Then he walked to a nearby hotel and checked in for a few weeks before renting a small, one-bedroom apartment in New Wilmington, Pa.

After his shifts as a forklift operator at a cheese plant, he returned to a sparse apartment, watched TV on an air mattress and ate fast food and frozen dinners with his cat, Rascal, close by.

He tried dating, but “Lord knows what you are going to get out of a bar scene.”

There were plenty of women who loved flirting with a soldier, but Schultz couldn’t find a “kick-back woman” he could listen to country music with.

Not far from the cheese plant at the Medvec home, Carol and the kids were trying to adjust to life without a father. Carol, 42, divorced her husband in 2004, the same year Schultz returned from his first tour of duty.

Lonely nights. Lonely lives. Only a mile apart.

A phone connection

Back in Iraq for the second time, Schultz, a mechanic stationed about 180 miles north of Baghdad, ran recovery missions for the National Guard, fixing trucks and bringing them back to base when they took a hit.

He’d gotten plenty of letters from kids like 9-year-old Randy from California and 9-year-old Kelly in Michigan. He tried to write them back, but sometimes he’d be away from base for days, often with little sleep.

He always found a way to write to the Medvec kids. Soon, their short letter exchanges turned into longer e-mails and phone calls. He asked whether they would send him soup. They talked about school and their friends.

He and Luke, then 17, were both Pittsburgh Steelers fans. Shawna, 20, told him all about her boyfriend problems and girl drama. Caroline, 9, wanted to know about his guns. Blaine, 16 and a straight-A student, talked about being in the drum line.

And Little Mouse, as Schultz liked to call Jannah Lynn because “she sounded just so cute and so tiny,” told him how much she missed him.

“He wasn’t trying to be my dad; he was trying to be a father figure and friend,” Shawna said. “I felt comfortable talking to him.”

For the first time in a while, Schultz wasn’t as lonely. He looked forward to the children’s calls and didn’t mind walking a mile to the call center.

One day Carol answered one of his calls.

He sounds like Jack Nicholson, she thought.

At first, they talked mostly about the kids. Sometimes he knew more than she did.

“Do you really know where Luke is going tonight?” he asked once.

He’s worrying about my kids while he’s in Iraq. What kind of man does that?

Later, they realized Schultz had worked at the cheese plant a mile from her home. They went to the same high school and spent most of their lives in tiny New Wilmington, with a population of about 2,500.

Soon they were spending three or four hours at a time on the phone, splitting the roughly $400 monthly phone bill.

“I really felt like I knew him forever,” she said.

He called her before every mission. He could hear her crying when they hung up.

“She was like a little schoolgirl,” her eldest, Shawna, said. “If I would go to use the phone, she would be like, ‘Don’t use it, Jim’s gonna call me.’ ”

Romance blossoms

Unlike the veteran Army wives and girlfriends, Carol knew little of a soldier’s life. She wanted to know if he had a swimming pool in Iraq and what time he got off work.

Once when she hadn’t heard from him in five days, she frantically called the Red Cross demanding that he call home. They told her to call back when she hadn’t heard from him in five months.

She didn’t like hearing too much about Jim’s missions. His vehicle had been hit by roadside bombs six times. He was awarded a Bronze Star for bravery and once pulled two men from a burning truck.

He was more than happy to forget about fighting and talk about life back home in Pennsylvania.

For her birthday, he sent a few dozen roses.

For his birthday, Shawna persuaded Carol to make a sexy calendar. She and Jim had never exchanged photos. When Jim flipped through the pictures, some of Carol wearing his Army fatigue jacket, he told his buddies he was going to marry her. “I just fell in love with the way she talked, her sense of humor, her voice.”

Last March, he flew to Pittsburgh International Airport for a nine-day vacation.

She hid behind a pillar to watch him come down the escalator. He gave her a hug and a big kiss.

“I’m going to marry her, she is so god-awful gorgeous,” Jim thought, looking at her petite frame and strawberry blond hair.

Three days later, they married at the same church where Carol had gotten his name.

For their honeymoon, the five Medvec kids and Jim’s two children, Jimmy, 21, and Rena, 19, went to the Allegheny Mountains.

A few days later, Carol drove him back to the airport as little Jannah Lynn cried.

New beginning

Sgt. Jim Schultz canceled his plans to serve a third tour of duty and had his military checks sent to Carol.

Though the kids loved Jim as a pen pal, they were skeptical of him as a husband and dad.

“I was hesitant at first -- everyone would be,” said Luke. “I had to make sure it was serious.”

“I was still trying to get used to him and protect my mom,” said little Caroline.

“My mom’s my best friend,” said Shawna. “Of course you are going to be skeptical.”

On top of worrying about their mom’s happiness, they also worried about Jim’s safety -- he still had about six months left on his second tour. They blocked CNN from the TV and didn’t read the newspaper.

They prayed and sent cards. The walls around Jim’s bunk bed filled up quickly. Colorings from Jannah Lynn and Caroline, silly cards that sang, “I’m Walking on Sunshine.” Even Milkshake, the family cat, wrote Jim.

And Jim wrote them back.

For a soldier with a gruff voice, buzz cut and tattoos on both arms, the letters were surprisingly tender.

“I have not ever been so happy in my life. You are the only thing that made me make it through.”

A few months later, Carol and the kids decided to leave chilly Pennsylvania and rented a three-bedroom house with a pool in the Tampa suburb of Clearwater to be near her dad and sister. She got a job as a surgical counselor. Luke and Shawna both got jobs and rented a home half a mile away.

It was only three months until September when Jim would return. Carol slept with the home phone and her cellphone by her pillow. Jim walked her through what would happen if he was killed, and she knew how to get herself to Germany if he was injured.

They counted the days, planning the airport reunion with posters and funny shirts.

The littlest girls wore yellow “Mission get dad” T-shirts. The older kids had ones with Jim’s nicknames for them on the back, “Blainer,” “Lukester” and “Hey, Girlfriend” for Shawna.

Carol wore a white, Marilyn Monroe-style halter dress. The crew, which included Jim’s son, Jimmy, carried a dozen yellow balloons and a handful of “Welcome Home” posters.

“It was like a parade,” says Carol.

They missed Jim at his gate, but finally met up with him at baggage claim.

“Here comes Miss Marilyn Monroe running and pushing everybody out of the way,” he said.

More than 100 strangers crowded around them, clapping and shaking Jim’s hand. Jim and Carol cried.

A dad and a soldier

Life is hectic in Florida. Jim wakes everyone in the morning, makes breakfast, packs lunches, looks for missing backpacks and homework. He heads to Carol’s office most afternoons to take her to lunch and runs her bath when she gets home from work.

He helped Blaine get his driver’s license and buy a car. He fixed Jannah Lynn’s bike.

They call him Daddy J.

“He does a great job filling that father figure, just being thrown into it. He copes really well,” says Luke. “I wouldn’t trade him for anything. My mom made a good choice.”

At night, Jim puts everyone to bed and stays up e-mailing his resume. With no job prospects, he’s planning to reenlist to pay the bills. There’s a good chance he could go back to Iraq in March for as long as 15 to 18 months.

“I think about it all the time. I don’t want to leave my family again after I just got home,” he says.

Carol is caught between terror and admiration. Some days she jokes about moving to Canada. On others, she cries until she’s numb. For better or worse, she knows Jim is a soldier.

“That is my biggest fear. If it was me, I’d say, ‘No, I can’t go,’ but Jim would say, ‘They need me,’ ” she says.

“What else can we do?”

Jim hasn’t slept a full night since he’s been back from Iraq.

“I’m still so wound up,” he says.

But there are moments of peace too.

“I get to roll over and give a beautiful woman a kiss and say good night. I don’t have to worry when I hear a rumble that I just got hit with a mortar. It gives you that sense of . . . .”

He sighs. “I’m home.”