Vaulters Support Each Other article (ND)

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http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandfork ... 708535.htm

Support system

Friends from rival high schools help each other through fathers' deployments

By Paulette Tobin

Herald Staff Writer


Friends John McNamara and Joshua Pohlman met through hockey, worked as lifeguards together at Elks Pool and this spring are competing against one another in the pole vault event at local track meets. A week from today, both will graduate from high school, McNamara from Red River and Pohlman from Central.

But their friendship goes beyond a shared interest in guy stuff like sports, cars and shooting, and the enjoyment they clearly derive from needling each other. For the past year and a half, they've shared the highs and lows, the pride and fears that come from having a father fighting the war in Iraq.

John's father, Maj. Mike McNamara, U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, was the first to go. He was absent from his family for nearly all of 2004, serving with the 1st Marine Division based in Ramadi, and returning to Grand Forks in December.

Joshua's father, 1st Lt. Roger Pohlman of the North Dakota Army National Guard's 188th Air Defense Artillery, was deployed in October and is serving in the area near Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

A Grand Forks police officer, Roger Pohlman has requested leave so he can attend his son's graduation. (At the time this was written, his family didn't know whether he'd make it.) He isn't scheduled to return home until December.

When your dad is on the other side of the world and in harm's way, said John and Joshua, both 18, no one understands like someone who is going through the same thing.

"I don't think there's anything you can really do to prepare yourself for it," John McNamara said. "When your dad leaves, there's nothing you can do about it. You don't really come to grips with it until you have to say goodbye."

Joshua Pohlman's father was gone for training for most of the summer before he left for Iraq, so Joshua, his mother, Shelley, and sister, Megan, a student at UND, all knew his departure was a matter of time.

"It was different for my sister," Joshua said. "She took it harder. There was more hugging and crying."

Then Joshua described the moment he and his father shared the night before his father's departure.

"We went out in the garage and went over the oil weights for the lawn mower and the snow blower," Joshua deadpanned. Seated next to Joshua at the Pohlman's dining room table, John McNamara began to laugh.

"Hey," Joshua shot back, "at least I didn't do the handshake when he left the next day. I went all the way to the hug."

Hard days

The first days after his father left were the hardest, Joshua Pohlman said. It's not just that you miss your father, he said, you realize what he's missing, too, like your hockey championship game and seeing you off to the prom. Keeping in touch through e-mail and phone calls helped. Joshua said he could tell a lot from hearing his father's voice.

"You can tell the way someone talks that he's beat down," Joshua said.

John McNamara remembered the first months his father was gone, how his fears for his father could be triggered by the most mundane things. If someone came into his classroom with a note for his teacher, John would find himself wondering: Is this the day they'll come to tell me something has happened to my dad?

John is the oldest of four children, including Patrick, 15; Katherine, 11; and Colleen, 1½. Before his father left, he gave John the "you're in charge, take care of everybody" speech that fathers have been giving their sons for centuries. Because no matter how you fake it, Mike McNamara said, when you leave for war, there's always a little voice telling you that you may not be coming home again.

"In the midst of all that, you look at one of your babies, and you say, 'Hey, you're going to be the man of the house,'" Mike McNamara said. "(I told John) you're going to have to be there for your mom and for Patrick and Katherine and Colleen."

McNamara said he and his wife, Susan, were proud of how John handled himself.

"He showed me and his mother a glimpse of the kind of man he will be," John's father said.

Keeping upbeat

McNamara said he was thankful that while he was gone his son had people like Joshua Pohlman and his family for support. Joshua's mother used to e-mail him in Iraq, McNamara said, to tell him about the things their sons were doing together.

It's wasn't long before Roger Pohlman's unit went on full alert, and his family was saying goodbye to him, too.

Joshua Pohlman said he's dealt with his dad's absence by keeping busy. He doesn't let himself dwell on it, he said. His mother said Joshua's way was to focus on his goals, like his father taught him. Only once does she remember Joshua talking about his fears, she said.

"A day or two before his father left, he said, 'Dad, you just can't get shot,'" Shelley Pohlman said. "That's the only thing he really said about it. He tries to keep busy with his school and his friends."

Joshua's education and the wars with Iraq have come full circle, his mother said. When Joshua was a preschooler, his father - then active duty Air Force - fought in the first Gulf War. Now, with Joshua about to graduate, his father is soldiering again in the Middle East. Both wars involved long separations from his father.

"It's just good for him to have John, to have somebody who's gone through it," Shelley Pohlman said. "They just sort of play off of each other and keep each other upbeat." It helps, too, she said, that John McNamara's father came back from Iraq safe and sound.

"It just a real testament that they will come back," she said. "You fear the worst the whole time."