Rural Town Builds Access for Disabled Servicewoman
Reprinted from The New York Times, June 13, 2003, by Peter T. Kilborn
PALESTINE, W.Va., June 7 - When Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch
finally gets back from the hospital and rolls the mile
through the hollow of Mayberry Run Road, she will hardly
recognize the house where she grew up sharing one of the
two bedrooms with her sister and brother.
Volunteers, moved by the story of the 20-year-old private
who was captured in Iraq and then freed from a hospital
there, have flattened the flank of a hill to make room for
a garden. With donated machines and materials they have
spread gravel for parking, laid electrical and telephone
wire underground, installed two new bathrooms and added two
bedrooms so Private Lynch can have one of her own.
They pushed the ceilings up to eight feet, leveled rickety
floors, rebuilt the porch and installed new windows and
double doors so Private Lynch can get around in the
wheelchair she might need for a while.
"Her bedroom, her bath, we've made all that handicap
accessible," said the county's deputy sheriff, Sgt. Lewis
Peck, who is giving up weekends and vacation time to manage
the job.
In the weeks since the nation heard about the April 1
rescue of Private Lynch and saw video footage of her on a
stretcher, much of the story of her capture and freedom has
remained hazy, and the military has been sparing with the
details of her recovery.
The Army has dismissed some news reports that Private
Lynch's wounds included stabs and gunshots sustained in a
firefight. And it has bristled at suggestions that the
Pentagon, with a video camera running, dramatized the raid
of an Iraqi hospital for political effect.
"She wasn't stabbed. She wasn't shot and she has some
broken bones," said Lt. Col. James Casella, a Defense
Department spokesman.
Walter Reed Medical Center simply reports that she has had
surgery to fix a broken foot and "remains in satisfactory
condition, undergoing occupational and physical therapy."
None of the uncertainties, however, have intruded upon the
area's admiration for Private Lynch. "We're proud of her
for serving, for going to Kuwait, for defending our
country," said Deborah Hennen, the Wirt County assessor.
Clifford Reynolds, 77, a longtime resident, said, "Jessica
deserves everything she gets. I think this controversy is
jealousy. She didn't do anything to deserve that."
Private Lynch's Wirt County, population just under 6,000,
is a job-starved pocket of Appalachia just east of the Ohio
River. It is one of those rural American places too poor or
too proud to provide comprehensive social services to help
the needy.
Nearly half the adults in Wirt County do not have jobs, the
poverty rate is about 20 percent, and there has been too
little money to take on projects like rebuilding the
41-year-old county swimming pool in Elizabeth, the county
seat. But residents have banded together to remodel the
home of Gregory O. Lynch Sr., a self-employed truck driver,
his wife, Deadra, who worked for a photo processing company
in Parkersburg, and their children, Jessica, her older
brother, Gregory Jr., also a soldier, and her younger
sister, Brandi, who has just finished high school.
People help neighbors with volunteered time, with auctions,
$5 ham dinners, car washes, raffles and dollar bills they
tie to money trees for someone in trouble. For Private
Lynch, Ms. Hennen said, "We had a 'dip-and-donate' potluck
dinner. Everybody brought a covered dish." At the end of
the serving line the organizers put a bucket for
contributions and then held an auction.
"We raised more than $13,000 that night," said Ms. Hennen,
a friend of the family who has organized most of the
countywide efforts for the Lynches.
With Private Lynch's parents out of work while they tend to
their daughter in Washington, she said, "That was to help
the Lynches pay their bills." More has flowed into an
account for the family at the Elizabeth branch of WesBanco
Bank of Wheeling, W.Va.
People here help out on their own terms, chasing off
merchants who would exploit Private Lynch's celebrity
unless she and her family get every penny of profit. Peggy
Shears, the editor of the weekly Wirt County Journal, said
that a man in Florida called asking for someone in town to
sell his Jessica candles. He sent eight samples with
pictures of Private Lynch stuck to them.
The newspaper could buy them from him for $21 and sell them
for $24, Ms. Shears said he told her. "Get on the
bandwagon," she recalled him saying. She turned him down. A
couple of stores in the area sell Jessica Lynch T-shirts,
but a businessman in Parkersburg provides them at cost, for
$2. The stores sell them for $5, and the family gets $3.
"People here are not going to exploit that little girl,"
Ms. Shears said.
To organizations and government agencies that might offer
buildings and grants, Diana Ludwig, executive director of
the area economic development corporation, said: "No one
wants to be seen as taking advantage of this child. We're
trying to maintain the dignity of the family and the
dignity of the community."
In tiny, bend-in-the-road Palestine, six miles from
Elizabeth, outsiders have begun to grasp for a share of the
town's bragging rights to a young soldier who is fast
becoming a folk hero. "Home of Jessica Lynch, Ex-P.O.W.,"
say crisp new green-and-white signs on roads into Palestine
and Elizabeth. "Compliments of City of Charleston," which
is an hour's drive south of Palestine.
Palestine's original economic base, locks on the now
unnavigable Little Kanawha River, dried up more than 50
years ago. With its grocery stores and gas stations long
gone and the tractor repair shop shuttered and for sale,
there is just the What-Not shop, a warren of bric-a-brac,
candy, soda and used appliances. "Ain't much here to get
ahead," said Mr. Reynolds, who was tending the shop.
Few here can fathom what being the hometown of a prisoner
rescued in a faraway war might mean. "She's going to be on
a pedestal the rest of her life," said Rhodes Wilson, 82, a
retiree who moved back to town 20 years ago. "Palestine's
going to be on the map. It's made a place in history."
Mail for Private Lynch, once arriving at a rate of 1,000
pieces a day, has slowed. But unsorted letters a foot deep
cover a bunk in one of Elizabeth's two jail cells, and
unopened gifts fill the other cell floor to ceiling.
Berylann Lewis, Palestine's postmaster, said she would like
to think that the ties to Private Lynch might boost the
economy of a town with no jobs. A convenience store or a
restaurant catering to tourists as well as townspeople
might help, people say, without compromising the
community's integrity.
But a lack of money and a wariness of exploitation has
stifled most efforts. Ms. Lewis could be pressing the
limits of commercialization with a handmade, prestamped
postcard showing the post office that she sells at a loss
for 25 cents, 2 cents more than the cost of the stamp on
it. She is also designing an envelope for collectors with a
Purple Heart stamp and a postmark that reads, "Jessica
Lynch Station."
Inside the post office, Ms. Lewis has put up a "thinking of
you" bulletin board honoring Private Lynch and two other
soldiers from town, one still in Kuwait. Outside, a group
known as the Friends of Mohammed has planted a flower
garden in honor of Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, the Iraqi
lawyer who led United States troops to Private Lynch. Mr.
Rehaief has since been granted asylum in the United States
and has become Palestine's No. 2 hero.
Across Wirt County, the big yellow ribbons that went up
after Private Lynch's capture have faded to white, but many
are being replaced with fresh ones. Some, made of wood and
sheet metal, have been nailed up to stay. The cause behind
them now is not her capture and freedom but her recovery.
After two months, there is growing concern here that her
healing seems slow.
"She wanted to come home by the Fourth of July," said Ms.
Hennen, "But I don't see that happening. Last I heard, she
was able to walk on a walker but not down a hallway on her
own. Her right leg is in a cast. Her left leg has pins and
rods. She has some problems with her right hand. A month
ago, she could grip a ball but couldn't release it."
|
