Navy News, opinions, editorials, news from Iraq, photos, reports - Navy Times

Michelle Obama meets with military spouses

NORFOLK, Va. — When Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, held a roundtable with military spouses and retirees here on Wednesday, she got an earful — and said that if her husband is elected, he has a plan to help them.

Six military spouses and three retired officers participated in the roundtable with Obama on the campus of Old Dominion University here, with about 200 invited retirees, veterans and spouses in the audience. Most were invited because they were volunteers with the Obama campaign, or were invited by someone in the Obama campaign, said campaign officials and some of the attendees interviewed by Military Times.

Editor’s note: Military Times has a standing interview request with Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona. To read a transcript from an earlier roundtable meeting between McCain and Military Times reporters and editors held last October, visit http://www.militarytimes.com/mccaininterview.

The issues that members of the roundtable brought up spoke to the pressures that military families face, especially in wartime.

An Air Force wife said she had to give up her job when her husband deployed because she couldn’t find child care.

A Marine wife, a former executive, said she home-schools her children because she couldn’t find a public or private school that could meet her children’s needs.

A Navy wife described the pressures of taking care of her husband’s father, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, while also caring for her infant and her teenager — all while her husband was deployed.

This was the third roundtable Michelle Obama has held this year with military family members, following sessions at Fort Bragg, N.C., and Fort Campbell, Ky.

The intensive 1½-hour session “touched the tip of the iceberg,” said Amanda McBreen, wife of a Marine lieutenant colonel who is in the process of moving to the Norfolk area from Parris Island, S.C.

“It’s an honor that someone in an influential position like Mrs. Obama would care enough to listen to what I have to say,” said McBreen, one of the spouses who participated in the roundtable. “I don’t wear my husband’s rank, so to be asked to have an opinion is quite an honor. I’ve spent 18 years following my husband and being told what to do without someone ever asking me how I feel about that.”

Obama said the issues that have been raised to her at Norfolk, Bragg and Campbell run the gamut from the need for more affordable child care to the challenges spouses face in cobbling together careers through many reassignment moves to concerns about the quality of education for their children.

“The mental health stresses appear to be higher for people who are active and in the midst of deployment,” she said in an interview with Military Times following the roundtable. “The stress is just so much more powerful. But the issues are the same. It’s just how far on the brink someone is.”

She said there should be more services to help families deal with this, and she noted that her husband, if elected, has said he would seek to provide more support for military families, including counseling.

Michelle Obama said she has heard from spouses in family readiness groups who take their responsibilities very seriously but are doing some things for which they are not trained.

She said she is inspired by “the extent to which these spouses don’t complain.”

“They are proud of their service, they are proud to be a part of the military, and they don’t want anyone to feel sorry for them,” she said. “They are doing the best they can do to support each other and to keep it together. And most of them are amazingly keeping it together.

“Even with that said, the thing I always tell people when they tell me that is, [it] still isn’t right. We still need to talk about it so that people are aware and we can make the changes, and understand the full cost of war. I think most of America would understand that. It’s just that I don’t think we know.

“We need to learn and listen and then support funding. When we think about going to war, we have to think about things like this. How many troops do we deploy? How do we deploy them? How do we do it in a way that doesn’t debilitate families? What do we do to support those families? What does that cost?”

Barack Obama has released his plan for supporting military families, which includes creating a military family advisory board of experts and family representatives to identify ways to ease the burden on spouses and families. He would also provide more support for volunteer networks, “including services and training and paid support staff,” according to a brochure provided at the roundtable.