When President Obama made the announcement last Friday about withdrawing troops from Iraq, I couldn’t help but think of Sharyn Turner.
The day before, Sharyn and I had lunch in Winston-Salem. Sharyn is public relations specialist for Reynolda House Museum of American Art, and I’d been over for a press preview of a new exhibit (see article on this page).
Over lunch, we’d discovered we each had a son named Andrew.
Her Andrew is 32 years old and a captain in the U.S. Marines Corps.
My Andrew turns 13 this summer.
Her Andrew has been deployed to Iraq three times.
On March 30, 2003, the Huey helicopter that Andrew Turner was helping pilot crashed in Iraq.
He was the only survivor.
Sharyn and her husband Ron found out at 9:30 on a Sunday night, when two Marines and a minister came to their door.
Sharyn was irritated when the doorbell rang.
“Who could possibly be coming to the door this late?” she thought.
She was only steps behind her husband when he opened the door to the contingent.
“The captain yelled out, ‘Your son is alive!'” Sharyn remembered.
Sharyn and Ron knew a helicopter had crashed but they had no idea it was Andrew’s.
“You’re completely taken aback,” Sharyn said.
The Marines told the Turners what they knew ó that the Huey crashed, that Andrew was the only survivor of a four-person crew. They did not know the extent of his injuries.
“I was grateful he was alive,” Sharyn says.
From that point, the Marines were with them every day until their son came home in April. The Turners spoke with the media at the airport in Greensboro before Andrew arrived.
“There was a lot of press there,” she said.
Then airport security took them onto the tarmac.
Andrew was the last person to deplane, walking on crutches and wearing hand-me-down clothes.
“I ran out to him,” Sharyn said.
She doesn’t remember the first thing he said to her but she does remember this: “He had a big grin on his face. I thought OK, there’s my boy.”
As the family walked through the airport, chants of “USA! USA!” began, and people started singing “God Bless America.”
All of the law enforcement on hand saluted Andrew. The whole neighborhood turned out to see him arrive at the house ó neighbors, friends, his Boy Scout troop, Vietnam veterans.
“Do you know what that’s like when someone salutes your son?” Sharyn asked. “It was very touching. It was just the sweetest thing you have ever seen.
“It was just the best of America.”
Sharyn said she was “cautiously optimistic” about the new government in Iraq.
Andrew finishes his assignment as an instructor at the Naval Academy next spring. Sharyn hopes that the president’s timetable means that he won’t have to return to Iraq.
“I got over his plans to enter the military a long time ago,” she said. “He amazes us and makes us proud every day, as do so many of his colleagues.”