Finding a way to provide help for a soldier's child in need

By Josh Rabe

Published: October 28, 2007

PONCA CITY — Albert's parents knew they were raising a troubled boy, but when they sought help from a children's home designed to help veterans, they were turned away.

The boy's father, Roger, is a 23-year Army veteran who served in the Gulf War, Bosnia and Saudi Arabia. He's stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, training soldiers for deployment to Iraq, while he waits for his own name to be called for deployment.

The family asked that their last name not be used due to an ongoing custody battle.

Roger raised his 13-year-old son as a single parent, and a soldier, for several years after Albert's mother died.

Several years into a new marriage, Albert's behavior grew worse.

He began stealing family cars and amassed a collection of stolen cell phones, resulting in his arrest.

His father and stepmother pleaded with police to lock him up in hopes of changing his behavior, but charges were dropped.

His stepmother, Carrie, said the family sought help from private treatment facilities, but their insurance would cover only two weeks of treatment. That's when they sought help from a little-known children's home for veterans in Ponca City.

Bill Alexander, director of the home, said it sickens him to have to turn away veterans who need help raising their children, but it has become a hard financial reality.

"We're in an atmosphere of war now,” Alexander said. "We are in a time when more and more children are seeing both parents deployed overseas.”

The American Legion Children's Home was established in 1928 by oil magnate and Conoco founder E.W. Marland as a place where children who lost parents in World War I could call home, and it could be a temporary home to children with parents fighting the next Great War overseas.

Children like Patricia Long once grew up here in a campus of Art Deco-styled buildings that sits on a pastoral hilltop on the outskirts of Ponca City. Long's father lost both his legs in World War II, and made the tough decision to send away his two eldest daughters when he could no longer afford to care for his family after returning home.

It was a temporary home for children who wondered whether their parents would be coming home from war. For those who lost their family in battle, it became their home until adulthood.

"We're letting our soldiers down by not living up to that mission,” said Long's granddaughter, Kerri Bowman, who now works at the children's home.

Alexander said the children's home is the only place in the nation created by the American Legion to care for children of veterans. It also gets most of its funding from Legionaires.

That arrangement worked fine until about 30 years ago, when there was a downturn in the number of veterans' children without parents at home. The home had extra space for once and the state's child welfare system said it needed more room, so the children's home obliged.

Over the years, the home took in more and more children in the custody of the Department of Human Services. As the cost of child care increased, the home began to rely more on DHS contracts to keep afloat, until they reached a point where there was no longer room left for military children.

The American Legion continues to support the home, but that funding is not enough to pay the cost to take in veterans' children again, Alexander said.

Alexander doesn't know just how great the demand is, but the home has been turning away an average of one military family every week for lack of space.

One of them was Jim Small, a Vietnam veteran who served 10 years in the U.S. Army. Small and his wife adopted one of the couple's grandchildren at birth, fearing her parents were ill-suited to raise a child.

When the second child, a boy, was born, Small knew he couldn't afford to take on a second child. When he called the children's home in Ponca City, he was told they couldn't either.

Eventually, someone took Albert in, but it wasn't the solution his parents were looking for.

His stepmother said Albert began making false accusations against his parents so he would be taken by child welfare workers. The plan worked, and now Albert is a ward of the state in the custody of his aunt, she said.

Now the family faces a hearing to determine if the boy is deprived or delinquent. If he is found to be deprived, most likely he'll remain in state welfare custody. If the court finds him delinquent, he'll be sent to the Office of Juvenile Affairs.

Albert's stepmother, Carrie, said either option affords little hope that their son will return home. Alexander thinks there should be a better option for military families.

"A veteran shouldn't have to abuse their children to get them in state custody just to get them in the door here,” Alexander said. "There has to be a better option and I think we have a track record that proves that.”

The children's home is planning to launch a fundraising campaign early next year to add a new dormitory that will be used exclusively for children of veterans.

Mark Moll, a mobilization and deployment specialist at Fort Sill, said he thinks military families are better prepared now to deal with the consequences of deployment.

As part of their preparation for deployment all single parents, or couples who are both in the military, are required to prepare an extensive plan for the care of their children, Moll said. It includes arranging a living will spelling out who gets custody of the children in the event of a soldier's death, and other legal documents like granting power of attorney to a temporary caregiver.

Moll said the new requirements should mean far fewer children are orphaned than in previous conflicts, even the first Gulf War, when such plans weren't required.

Alexander said even the best planning can't anticipate predict how a child will react once a parent is gone.

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