From today’s Time magazine’s Aug. 11 story (sub.) — “A Bereaved Mother’s Crawford Vigil” — a featured interview with our BoomanTribune core member, Military Tracy, who drove from Alabama and joined up with Brinnaine, Janet, and Rick in Austin.
I just spoke with Tracy who told me that she met Time reporter Hilary Hylton today at the Peace House in Crawford. Ms. Hylton was lost, and asked Tracy’s help in finding Cindy’s gathering area. Tracy led her out to the “Love Camp.” While Tracy didn’t pour out her story to Ms. Hylton, someone else suggested that Tracy had a story to tell. And she did:
The protestors are supplied with large jugs of water and iced tea by a volunteer shuttle service based at the Crawford Peace House, in this tiny Texas town some 20 miles south of Waco. Tracy Sivacek, the 40-year-old wife of an Army Apache helicopter pilot, delivers water to Sheehan’s busy outpost. Sivacek left behind her husband and disabled five-year-old son on Monday and drove nonstop from Fort Rucker, Alabama to Crawford, pausing only to sleep in a Waffle House parking lot. Her husband served one tour in Iraq and, she says, he has not been handling the adjustment back home well. Despite his reservations, she felt she had to support Sheehan’s anti-war protest. MORE BELOW:
PHOTO CAPTION: Tracy, left; Janet, center; Brinnaine, right. Photo taken Thursday night in Austin by Adastra aka Rick Holcomb, an Austin photographer enroute to Crawford.
More from today’s Time magazine’s Aug. 11 story — “A Bereaved Mother’s Crawford Vigil.”
“It’s not unfair for us to ask questions,’ Sivacek says, adding she’d been concerned about the war even before her husband was posted to Iraq.
“(War) is just too much for any person,” she says.
In addition to the pressure of raising a disabled child, Sivacek says her uncle, a Vietnam veteran, had committed suicide in June of this year, compounding her fears about America’s fighting forces and military spouses.
[PHOTO LEFT: Tracy, far right, helps load the van that she drove from Alabama to Austin, Texas, where she met up with Brinnaine and Janet. Photo taken by Adastra aka Rick Holcomb of Austin, Texas.]
Sivacek’s concerns about the war led her to start posting on antiwar web logs, though up til now she had never even joined any protests.
As she watches law enforcement officers drive by periodically to ensure protestors remain in a designated area about two miles from the Bush ranch, Sivacek says she’s become more confident now that she’s met up with some of her virtual friends.
She intends to stay at the protest site at least until Saturday — or until she and her fellow protestors are arrested or run off.
PHOTO RIGHT: The backseat of Tracy’s van that she drove from Alabama to Austin, Texas. Photo taken by Adastra aka Rick Holcomb of Austin, Texas.]
Update [2005-8-11 23:36:32 by susanhu]: Big thanks to Mnemosyne for alerting me to the Time mag story, and for DIane101’s great help in contacting Tracy by phone!
