Family first, blood and military

Staff Sgt. Michael Miles
Special to The Monitor

Sgt. 1st Class Ronald Bowers shows off his family while discussing his other family, his Soldiers, and how important both are to him.

---

For Sgt. 1st Class Ronald Bowers, a platoon sergeant with the Headquarters Company of the 116th Brigade Combat Team, Idaho National Guard, mobilization to Iraq has meant moving from one large family to another.

When he boarded a plane to come to Fort Bliss for training, he left behind a wife and seven children in Nampa Idaho, and took on the responsibility of overseeing a family of 11 Soldiers, the members of his communications platoon. He takes that responsibility seriously. “I have concern for my family and their well-being, and I have concern for the Soldiers in my charge. That’s a huge responsibility to have the safety and love of others in your stewardship. I have a lot of females in my section. One girl’s husband sent a big box of cookies and there was a little bag of them with a note in it to me that said ‘take care of my wife’.”

Bowers met his wife, Angie, when he was stationed in Germany. “I knew from the moment I saw her I was going to marry her, but she needed some convincing. We have all these weird parallels in our families. My dad was in the Air Force; her dad was in the Air Force. There’s two adopted kids in her family, there’s two adopted kids in my family. They had seven kids, we had seven kids. Now my wife and I have seven kids, two of them adopted. It’s kind of weird.”

His children range in age from 2 to 11 years old. The older ones understand what dad has to do, the younger ones just know that daddy is going away for a long time. The mobilization “was not a surprise, but it certainly was a sobering thought.” He said that fortunately there was time before he was mobilized to make sure the family’s affairs were in order to ensure they were taken care of. To remind him of his family, he carries a photo of the entire family in an ID pouch close to his heart. And his wife sent him a special pillowcase with handprints of each of the children on it as a connection to home.

Comparing his job to that of his wife, he says she has the harder job. “It’s very frustrating for her because her responsibilities don’t end at the end of the duty day. It’s summer time and all the kids are at home. So I’ll call her and we have just had dinner and will be watching TV or something…and after dinner for her are dishes, laundry and getting the kids ready for the next day. My job is easy compared to hers.”

Bowers spent 15 years on active duty as a communications technician, before moving to the National Guard. He joined the military because, “I needed direction in my life. I felt the structure the military provides would create an atmosphere where I could excel.”

Taking care of Soldiers has always been high on Bower’s priority list. “ When we were in Macedonia, we’d take the high frequency field radios to the people guarding the Serbian border. I’d run up the antenna and call New York and run a phone patch for these guys. I’d say ‘You want to call home, come here!’ Any form of communication I will use it.” Asked if that means he will be able to keep in touch with his family while in Iraq, he laughed and said, “You know I will! I have to test the continuity of the lines before others use the lines.”

Since seven of the 11 Soldiers in his section are females, he has special concerns. “I told the female Soldiers ‘At some point someone is going to sexually harass you, or try to harass you, and I want you to know that I am the person to come to, and that I will protect you.’ I am really protective of my females because of the environment they are in. My female Soldiers call me Papa Bear, and I take good care of them, as if they were my real daughters or my sisters.”

Bower’s father served in Vietnam, and he helped his son sort out his feelings about being sent to Iraq. “There is a sense of honor and duty to all of this. He is real proud of me for this. I think it is a good thing to fulfill your responsibilities and your duties. You know, to pay a little bit for the freedoms we enjoy.”