Author shares story of family life in military

LOCAL

ST. LOUIS JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL

Author shares story of family life in military

BY REPPS HUDSON, SPECIAL TO THE LIGHT

Alison Buckholtz didn't set out to write a book about maintaining a Jewish family in today's Navy, but that's what she did.

As she noted early in her entertaining, quite informative and sometimes funny memoir, she realized she and her husband, a pilot, and their young son, Ethan, and daughter, Esther, were part of a minority within a minority: a Jewish family with a deep commitment to the military at a time when few Americans are exposed to men and women in uniform and the many stresses that life causes to their families.

When she wrote Standing By: The Making of an American Military Family in a Time of War (Penguin Group, $24.95), "my husband and I had a goal, to educate non-military families about the lives of military families," Buckholtz said recently.

The 40-year-old freelance journalist simply wanted to explain what life in the U.S. military today is like. This is an experience most Americans took for granted when there was a draft and a larger standing military during the Cold War, which ended 20 years ago.

Today, with a smaller, all-volunteer Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force and Coast Guard, few Americans know about life in uniform and the role spouses and children play as the uniformed adult is deployed or assigned to a remote base somewhere in the world.

"There is a real civil-military divide in this country," Buckholtz said in a telephone interview from her home in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. Her husband, Scott, 41, is on a 12-month staff assignment in Baghdad.

Before she met and then married Scott in 2001, (he tried to reject her at least three times because he feared she would hate the role of an officer's wife), Buckholtz, who grew up near where she lives today, thought of military men and women as robots who blindly follow orders.

"Marrying into the military granted me a passport into an America I never knew existed, populated by a people whose overwhelming public silence masks lives lived at a level of intensity that would crush most mortals," she writes in the book's introduction.

She didn't realize the strength and resourcefulness and camaraderie the wives developed as they keep their families intact and work to help each other. She really didn't "know of the sacrifices they make. I came into the military with all those stereotypes we all have when we haven't been around those families."

Buckholtz quickly learned that keeping a Jewish home and honoring the traditions and holidays would be a tremendous challenge. She cites Department of Defense figures of 4,000 Jews today for all military branches. Compare that to the 550,000 who served in World War II, when Jews in uniform roughly mirrored their share of the civilian population of 3.5 percent.

There are few Jews in the Navy, where Scott is a commander (O-5 rank) and pilot. A 1990 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a ROTC scholarship, he has spent 19 years as a Navy pilot.

Buckholtz, who has kept her maiden name and doesn't give her husband's family name, said Scott went the Navy pilot's route because he always wanted to fly. Like many who join the military, whether as an officer or enlisted, he saw the intensive, technical training he would receive as a great asset to his career. If he were to retire after 20 years, he would be in his early 40s with the prospects of a second career in aviation.

But what about observing Jewish traditions in a military that today has few Jews, even though Jews have served in uniform in every war and conflict since the American Revolution?

Buckholtz and her husband found themselves developing a Jewish focal point when assigned for three years to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in far northwest Washington state. They lived in nearby Anacortes.

"It was my job to create a community," she said.

She and her husband organized services and meals for High Holy Days and Passover. They reached out to Jewish singles in uniform and helped to make available food and other necessities of a Jewish life.

And, perhaps surprisingly, they met no hostility or anti-Semitism in the Navy, one of the most traditional of the armed services. Instead they were met with well-intentioned curiosity.

"The military does very well in bringing people together, regardless of their religious background," Buckholtz said. "You find you are not going to be out there preaching your uniqueness."

That could become divisive — and every military unit must succeed in its mission, which means putting differences aside to get the job done.

The many positive comments about Buckholtz's book on Amazon.com focus on how well she portrays what is like a strange community of military families today as this country is fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only a few note the obstacles Buckholtz describes in sometimes amusing detail as she tried to create and maintain a Jewish home in a culture that simply doesn't know much about Jews.

When she speaks to Jewish groups about her book, like she will on Thursday, Nov. 5 at the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival, she said she isn't trying to draw Jews into the military, although that's always a possibility.

"I am interested in introducing the Jewish community to the military," Buckholtz said. "It's not a foreign country."

Alison Buckholtz

WHO: Author of 'Standing By: The Making of an American Military Family in a Time of War'

WHEN: 1 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5

WHERE: The JCC Staenberg Family Complex in Creve Coeur

HOW MUCH: $12 or free with a series ticket ($60)

TICKETS: 314-442-3299 or www.brownpapertickets.com