[Vision2020] Just to Give Us Something to Smile About

[Tom Hansen]

>From the Army Times at:

http://www.ArmyTimes.com

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Soldier finds love in pen pal exchange

By Kelli Kennedy - The Associated Press
   
CLEARWATER, Fla. — 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 their 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 life
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 second deployment
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 take 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 if 
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, she thought. 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, population 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 school girl,” said Shawna. “If I would go to use 
the phone, she would be like ‘Don’t use it, Jim’s gonna call me.”’

Blossoming love
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 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 six times by roadside bombs. 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 before. 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 Jannah Lynn cried.

A husband and a dad?
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,” Luke said. “I had to make 
sure it was serious.”

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

“My mom’s my best friend,” Shawna said. “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,” he wrote.

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 a half-
mile away.

It was only three months until September, when Jim would return. Carol 
slept with the home phone and her cell phone 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.

Settling in to a new life
Life is hectic in Florida. Jim wakes everyone in the morning, makes 
breakfasts, 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,” said 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 re-enlist to pay the bills. There’s a 
good chance he could go back to Iraq in March for as long as 15 months.

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

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 said. “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 said.

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.”

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"People who ridicule others while hiding behind anonymous monikers in chat-
room forums are neither brave nor clever." 

- Latah County Sheriff Wayne Rausch (August 21,
2007)

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