A Spouse Like You

By Melissa Meinzer

Back-to-school isn’t only for kids — just ask Sara Childs. While the Army National Guard wife will be caught up in the hubbub of a new school year for her five-year-old son, she’s also finishing up her own degree, completing her elementary education program online at Fort Hays State University.

“I’m doing it all virtually — Fort Hays has made that possible,” the 37-year-old tells us, by phone from Kansas. Even the student-teaching portion of the degree is happening locally, which is a huge bonus for Sara. “I don’t have the luxury to go away to school. I don’t have to worry about traveling or being away from my family.”

Sara is military from way back. Her father was a Viet Nam vet, and when high school ended and money was tight, the military seemed like a natural fit for her.

“My dad asked me, ‘Why the Army?’ I said ‘It was good enough for you!’ All the sudden it just made sense. Since my dad did, I always thought I would. I was a communications specialist, long range and short range radio systems.”

The Army took her to Korea, and nine months in, the team she was in got a new boss. “I’d already been there nine months — I was like, what can you tell me?” she says of the new guy.

Can you guess how this ends?

“Then we switched teams and started dating…” and got married and had a son, of course.

The pair deployed together twice, once sharing a room and once being separated for training: “He was in one building I was in another but we might as well be on different planets—we had to be soldiers.”

Sometimes it’s harder for a spouse left behind who has been a veteran, she tells us. “Sometimes it’s bad to know. I can read between the lines and understand more of what he was telling me.”

Sara spent some time as an FRG leader, and says it’s crucial to surviving deployments—like the one to Afghanistan her husband just returned from. “You’ve got to get in touch with your FRG and stay as involved as you can,” she says.

Besides communications technology and teaching kids—passions she hopes to eventually combine in the classroom—Sara blogs at www.madmommy.typepad.com and sews clothes for American Girl dolls and a friend’s lucky daughter. Check her out!