May 11, 2003 By Jackie Beranek 9 min read

Since the beginning of history, women around the world have labored, given birth and taken care of children. Ask any mother and she is sure to say that no matter how old her child grows to be, he or she will always be regarded as “her baby.”

And that is exactly how four local women feel about their sons who are far away in a distant land fighting to protect the rights of others.

Two of the four women said this Mother’s Day would be particularly hard for them because their sons are in Iraq, while one of the mothers is happy that her son returned from Saudi Arabia on Friday and another mother is happily awaiting her son’s arrival in Virginia at the end of the month.

One common thread that ran through the conversations with Kathleen Rocca of Uniontown, Brenda J. Mowery and Lisa Polito, both of Hopwood, and Cindy Walters of Redstone Township was their love for their sons and their faith in God.

“That’s what’s kept me going over the past couple of months,” said Rocca. “No matter how old my son gets, he will always be my little boy. My faith is what gets me through the day, because I can’t help but think about what could happen to Earl over there in Iraq.”

Army Reserve Master Sgt. Earl Rocca, 36, was deployed to Kuwait in mid-April but has since been moved to Iraq.

His mother said this is the third time he has been deployed to a war zone.

“First he was in Bosnia, and then last year he was sent to Kuwait, Afghanistan and Africa,” said Rocca. “Right now he’s with a special government humanitarian group living at Baath Party Headquarters in Baghdad.”

Rocca laughingly said that although her son has no electricity or water, he does have marble floors, which sure beats what he had in Afghanistan.

“When he’s not overseas, he’s a police officer in Frederick, Md.,” said Rocca. “He has a lovely wife and a good life in Maryland, where he’s dedicated to helping other people.”

Rocca said she’s very proud of the man her son has become.

“I’m at peace with what he does, because of my faith,” Rocca said. “I believe very strongly in my Catholic faith and in his Catholic upbringing. I guess I’m not as nervous as most mothers, because I have placed his life in God’s hands, and I believe that he’s being taken care of.”

Rocca said her son has good morals and good values, and that’s why he’s in the position he’s in. She said his service record is extremely good, and no matter what job he is given, he does it to the best of his ability.

“He’s a perfectionist,” said Rocca. “I am really extremely proud of him, because it’s hard on him and his wife being away so much. Although his wife works on the base, she is still all alone and you figure how many years out of their married life he has been away from her.”

Rocca said her son will retire from the Army Reserve next year with 20 years’ service. She said he already has sent his Mother’s Day cards to the three women who raised him: his mother, grandmother and godmother.

“He’s in Baghdad now and he will be there until the end of the year,” she said. “And, although I am very anxious to see him, I will have to settle for a telephone call on Mother’s Day or maybe I will get an e-mail.”

Mowery said her 27-year-old son, Robert, or RJ as his family calls him, is on a ship on his way to Iraq.

“He was just home for four days, and it was really hard to see him turn around and go again,” said Mowery. “He just got married on Feb. 8 and he left for Fort Lee (Virginia) on Feb. 27. He only had about a week’s notice before he was shipped out.”

Mowery said this will be the first Mother’s Day that her son – a sergeant in the Army Reserves, stationed with the 319th Engineering Division in Butler – hasn’t been home.

“I cried yesterday (May 5) when he said goodbye to me,” said Mowery. “I just feel sad that he’s not going to be here. I told him to just hurry up and get back home to us. It’s just really hard, because he has always been with us.”

Mowery said her family is very close, noting that her in-laws live next door and her children refer to them as “Mom and Dad and they call us Mommie and Dad. …It’s hard when you are as close as we have been, it really is.”

Mowery said the worst part for her family is knowing that they have not control over what happens overseas.

“They have our children,” she said. “When they were little, as mothers we protected them the best we could, but now they are all grown up and we can’t protect them anymore, and that’s what we want to do the most. It’s really scary being a mother and knowing that we can’t control what goes on over there.”

Mowery said her son’s unit is 100 miles from Baghdad, rebuilding runways and roads and crushing rocks at a quarry.

She also said that she and her daughter-in-law, Kimberly Star Jordan Mowery, don’t expect to see her son any time soon.

“As a mother you go through so many phases in a child’s life,” she said. “I watched as RJ played with blocks, then toy cars, then he moved on to driving cars and listening to the stereo, graduated from high school and went to college.

“And I was there when he decided that college wasn’t for him and he joined the Reserves. I’ve been there every step of the way for him, and I’m here for him now. I think the one good thing that has come out of all of this is that RJ has decided to give college another try.”

Mowery said that when her son left for the Army Reserves, he left on her birthday, and now he is gone for Mother’s Day.

“I’m so proud of him,” said Mowery. “He has become such a good, good man.”

Walters said her only child, Danny, 29, will return to Virginia from the Middle East on Friday.

“Although he’s coming home, I will not get to see him on Mother’s Day, because he lives in North Carolina,” said Walters. “He’s been overseas with the Air Force since February, and I’m sure he is going to want to spend some time with his wife and two children before making a trip to Pennsylvania.”

Walters said she personally can’t wait to put her arms around her son: “I didn’t get to see him when he left … but there are no words to describe how I will feel once he’s back on American soil.”

Walters said her son has been in Saudi Arabia, but he wasn’t allowed to say what his unit was doing. She knows, though, that her son’s job is with a maintenance company that repairs planes.

Danny Walters is a 1991 graduate of Brownsville Area High School.

Polito said her son Kalen, who turned 21 on May 5, is just finishing up an assignment in the Persian Gulf.

“We are so proud of him,” said Polito. “Kalen is in the Marines and was sent out with the 24th MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) in the Persian Gulf on Aug. 27, 2002. He was actually supposed to be back in the United States, but he called the end of February and said that they had given him a mandatory six-week extension right before the war started.”

Polito said she and her husband were holding their collective breath waiting for word from their son when he called and said that his group had seen major combat in Iraq. Polito said her son’s unit has been on a lot of secret missions. The 24th MEU is a special operations unit, and that’s why she and her family believe it was sent into Iraq.

“We heard from him last week, and he said that they had pulled out of Kuwait,” said Polito. “He said they accomplished their mission, which included going house to house and door to door on foot, rooting out the Republican Guard.”

Polito said it’s been a nightmare having her son in the Middle East, but her nightmare has turned to relief now that her son is on his way back to the United States aboard the USS Nassau. The unit is expected to arrive at a Virginia port by the end of the month.

“We are just so thankful that he is on his way home that I can’t even tell you,” she said. “This is the best Mother’s Day gift I could ever have gotten. Kalen is my oldest child, and I can tell you that it has been hard on his father and I and on his four siblings.”

Polito said her family has searched the Internet to find everything they could on the war in Iraq, and they have watched daily television news reports.

“I’ll tell you we are the lucky ones, because our son is coming home,” said Polito. “My heart goes out so much to the families who have lost their kids, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers,” she said. “The one thing that has been in the back of my husband’s and my head is that we don’t want to see any military people coming to our door. That has to be a parent’s worst nightmare. If that would have happened to us, I think I would have just dropped onto the floor and not gotten back up.”

Polito said that when her son gets out of the helicopter at Camp LeJeune, N.C., she and her family will be there to greet him.

“I can’t wait to see his face and to watch him get off that helicopter,” said Polito. “It will be a glorious day, and I will finally be able to feel in my heart that he is safe.”