When a whole town worries

With 11 of Coahoma's 932 residents serving in Iraq, all of this community shares the pride and pain.

	[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]
	Coahoma's justic of the peace, Quail Dobbs, right, visits with Sonny Taylor of El Paso at Cristene's Cafe. "There's not too much to see in Coahoma," he said. Click for photo gallery

COAHOMA, Texas - Ginger and John Wayne Metcalf's knock came just before 1 a.m. on a mild night last spring. The local sheriff had led the Marines to their door, to tell them their son was dead in Iraq.

Mrs. Metcalf described the sequence, one that people in this West Texas town dread every night: the dogs barking, the lights of a sedan, the rap on the door.

Coahoma has just 932 people. Add those just outside the town limits, and there are maybe 1,200.

At last count, 11 young men from here were serving in Iraq - nearly one of 100 residents, far more per capita than most cities, save for those adjoining U.S. Army bases. Several more are about to go.

At the height of the war last spring, 26 Coahomans were there, fighting in the desert or supporting ground troops from the sea and air.

Lance Cpl. Chad Bales Metcalf, 20, is the only one to die so far, but several have been wounded, including one of the Henry boys, who recently was shot five times in Tikrit.

As U.S. troops battle a simmering insurgency in Iraq and the nation's attention wanders, in Coahoma the war remains part of everyday life, as hard to escape as the winter wind knifing north across the plains.

Almost everyone in town, it seems, has seen the Metcalfs' memorial. A mother's grief and pride collide there, in the foyer of their home just outside town, a brick rancher surrounded by cotton fields where Chad used to ride the tractor with his daddy, looking for arrowheads in the sandy loam.

The walls are festooned with their son's pictures and Marine Corps medals, the official letters of condolence, his bayonet and a vial of sand from the desert where he died.

In Coahoma, every death in Iraq brings a pause and a prayer that no one here gets the knock. In a town this small, few are exempt from worry.

"One more soldier, one more American soldier, every day on the radio. Well, what kid is it?" said Gloria Jimenez, the Coahoma postmaster, who hears everything. She ships the care packages, provides free boxes and tape. "There's a sigh of relief when you hear it wasn't her son, or her son, or her son. But it's someone's son."

Coahoma, 280 miles west of Dallas, does not rise out of the West Texas plain. Instead it just materializes off Interstate 20, a cluster of low houses, a water tower and a Dairy Queen sign. Then it's gone, quick as a roadrunner in the mesquite. It has one diner, one service station and one market, no beer. It has a mayor and its own tiny school district - about 800 kids, grades K-12 - and strong high school sports.

The post office counts 660 boxholders and a 100-mile mail route with just 144 stops. There's no police department and no traffic light, and no need for either. If you need gossip go to Christene's Cafe, housed in a former lumberyard, which serves green enchiladas and chicken-fried everything to the farmers and roustabouts whose pickups fill the gravel lot.

The nearest newspaper is the Herald, 10 miles west in Big Spring, but Coahoma has its own news network, one far faster than CNN.

"You go in the grocery store, you visit there, you visit at our service station, at all the school activities. If anything happens you need to know about, somebody calls you and tells you about it," said Eula Bell Fowler, 72, a town historian who keeps the books at the family-owned garage.

"You miss church twice, and there's a lady ... who calls to see why you're missing church."

It is hard to see now, but Coahoma once was vibrant. Faded photos from the early 1900s show carts of picked cotton lining the dirt streets, waiting for the busy cotton gin, now long gone. They show well-dressed ladies standing outside a hotel, also gone, and horses hitched outside a saloon, gone.

But men still tip their hats and say ma'am, and wear jeans and cowboy boots. Cattle and cotton remain vital, although years of drought has taken its toll.

Oil was discovered here in 1928, and the oil fields provide steady work for many, running pipe or tending the pumpjacks bobbing across the plains. Some make extra cash leasing their mineral rights to oil companies, and there's a refinery between here and Big Spring. It smells like hot tar.

Otherwise there isn't much, and young people follow the tumbleweeds, away. About 75 to 80 percent of high school seniors go on to trade school, a university, or nearby Howard College, and roughly 10 percent join the military.

Like Karen Henry's sons, many enlist after high school, dismayed by their job prospects. Russell Henry, 26, serviced oil wells before he joined the Army back in 1998. Steven Henry, 22, was a hospital orderly in Big Spring when he followed.

"There's nothing for them to do," Mrs. Henry, 47, said over a Diet Coke at the Dairy Queen. "Just boredom, and wanting more out of life."

On a recent Wednesday night, the bitter cold was tempered only by the soft, warm glow from the cluster of churches open for midweek worship. Just outside town, in a lonely farmhouse on a low rise, Donna and Donnie Newton hushed the dogs and watched a Fox News report of a mortar attack on the 3rd Corps Support Command base just west of Baghdad.

That's their son's unit. Thirty-three soldiers were hurt, and one was dead.

"Oh, I wish they wouldn't do that," Mrs. Newton said, then she scurried off for her notebook to check his address against the location of the base. It told her nothing.

Mr. Newton, 45, shook his head. He has tried to stop obsessing about the news. He counseled calm as his wife fretted.

"Go head, drive yourself crazy," he said, gently.

"It will," she said. "It will drive me crazy until he's home."

Spc. Bobby Newton, 24, is a crack shot with a deer rifle who recently wrote his parents that he had killed his first Iraqis, defending against an ambush.

"They tried to blow my truck up, they missed so I got up on my wrecker and opened fire," he wrote. "I felt weird at first 'cause I've never killed anybody before."

Mrs. Newton, 45, a longtime teacher's aide at Coahoma High School, is known as Iraq Central. She knows most soldiers from school, and she tries to keep tabs on where everyone is based, who's in Iraq or Afghanistan, and who's about to go. She counts 46 graduates on active duty.

Soon other mothers will begin to call her, having heard about the mortar attack. They ask if she's okay, and if she's heard from Bobby.

The next morning, the mothers will call Karen Henry's house, following news that nine soldiers from the 82nd Airborne had died in a helicopter crash near Fallujah. Her middle son, Russell, is with the 82nd Airborne in Fallujah. The youngest, Steven, is with the 101st Airborne near Mosul.

Mrs. Henry is a wreck, transfixed by her TV and tied to her telephone, in case something happens. When the Army doesn't call or come, friends and families can only assume their boys are safe.

This week, no one hears anything.

The last bad news came last month, when Army Sgt. Jason Henry, 25, called his mom, Annette Henry, to say he had been shot five times in the legs and right hip while on patrol in Tikrit. Annette and Karen Henry are not related.

He's recuperating at 4th Infantry Division headquarters in Fort Hood, Texas, and is expected to rejoin his unit next month. Annette Henry's younger son, Marine Lance Cpl. Eric Henry, 20, is expected to deploy to Iraq next month as well.

Photos of local soldiers in Iraq hang at the mall in Big Spring. They're posted on the Coahoma High School Web site and are pinned to many church bulletin boards. Each Sunday morning at church, Mrs. Newton reads the names of local residents in the military. The people pray for them, the pianist plays America, and then they start the service.

The Howard County 4-H club adopted Newton's platoon, sending games and snacks. Local Vietnam War veterans have offered counseling. Residents and businesses have contributed to the mailing of more than 100 care packages, donating enough cash to cover the $25 it costs to send each box. Several homes around town fly an Army flag along with the American flag.

The relentless West Texas wind turns them to tatters in just a few months.

Small towns have long supplied much of the manpower for the nation's armed services, as young people look for more opportunity and a chance to see the world. In November, the Austin American-Statesman found that soldiers from counties of less than 50,000 were dying in Iraq at twice the rate of those from counties of 1-million or more.

The rows of gravestones in the tiny Coahoma Cemetery are interspersed with the markers of veterans from every major conflict from the Civil War to Vietnam. This is a conservative area, mostly white and Hispanic, and it literally is Bush country: the president was an oilman in Midland, 50 miles west. Even though the promised weapons of mass destruction haven't been found, most people here say they believe the war was crucial to American security.

As she thumbed through photos Steven sent from southern Iraq, where the landscape and dust storms hint of West Texas, Karen Henry echoed the thoughts of many: "I'd rather have my kids over there than have them bring it over here to my grandkids."

Ginger Metcalf, 42, is the town secretary, and John Wayne Metcalf, 46, took a job in the three-man maintenance department after drought dried up the income from his cotton farm. He also serves on the School Board.

The family is well-known and popular, and everyone still talks about Chad.

Chad was a mischievous boy who played football and loved to hunt, and "he could make anybody laugh," said his sister, Ginni, 17. The U.S. flag that flew from his truck in Iraq hangs over her bed. He worked at a tractor dealership after school and did odd jobs for Mayor Bill Read.

"Chad just had one speed," the mayor said. "Wide open."

Chad had talked about joining the Marines since the 10th grade, and he enlisted his senior year. His grandfather was in the service, and several close friends recently had joined the Army, including Bobby Newton and Steven Henry. But he was drawn to the hard-core image of the Marines.

John Wayne Metcalf hoped he would work the family cotton farm, but the ongoing drought made that impractical. They've made one crop in four years.

"Lord sakes," he said, "you can't encourage anybody to go into it when it's been so dry."

Chad died April 3 in the desert near Ash Shahin, in central Iraq, after two weeks of heavy combat. That day, he was driving a troop transport when his convoy came under fire. The trucks were separated, and Chad raced to catch up. The blowing sand hid a truck stopped in front of him, and he slammed into it at about 60 mph, the Marines told his family.

Thirteen other Marines were injured, but Chad was the lone fatality. His parents say they believe it was God's will, and they are proud he died defending their country. Marine Corps insignia festoon their home and trucks.

The day of his funeral was sunny and warm, and it seemed like every cop in Howard County was accompanying the casket in the motorcade or stopping traffic for the procession to pass.

His family held it at First Baptist in Big Spring, the biggest church they could find, and more than 1,400 people came. He was later buried at the national cemetery in Dallas.

Last month, Coahoma's class of 2001 dedicated a memorial and live oak tree at the school in his honor. His classmates also set up a college scholarship fund in his name, giving $1,000 each year to the student who, like Chad, ranks 46th in the senior class.

He is a hero here, and his death and the war seem not to have stunted the enthusiasm for the military.

So far this year, 10 seniors have enlisted, including five who have pledged themselves to the U.S. Marine Corps. Last week, in the school library, a young petty officer preached the career and educational opportunities of the Navy to a tall, red-headed senior in a leather letterman's jacket. The name on the back was Metcalf, for Jesse Metcalf, Chad's younger cousin.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times 490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 Contact the Times | Privacy Policy Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright