Oregon Public Broadcasting

It’s common for military families to experience a financial pinch after assignment overseas.  At best, fortunes turn quickly. 

At worst, families can be shaken to their foundations. Over the next few weeks, we’ll catch up with Brian and Laural Miller.

When last we met them, the Millers were coping with the strain of Brian’s long and repeated deployments to Iraq. OPB’s April Baer checked in on them recently. Hi, April.

April Baer: Good morning, Geoff.

Geoff Norcross: Remind us who the Millers are?

April Baer:  Brian Miller is a retired staff sergeant at Fort Lewis, near Olympia Washington.  He spent twenty years in the Army. During the last four of them, he was sent to Iraq three times. His wife, Laural Miller is from Eugene. They have five kids, age thirteen through three.

Geoff Norcross: What’s going on with them?

April Baer: Last time I spoke to family, they were in a tough spot. They’d lost their home to an adjustable rate mortgage, and were living in a rental house. Now, it’s eight months later. And they’ve become homeless. They live in a twenty-four foot travel trailer in Eugene.   Laural Miller showed me the place one day while the kids were at school.

Laural Miller: “Seven people, two dogs. This table turns into a bed. And that looks like storage overhead but it actually flips down and it’s a bunk. This couch turns into a bed, and there’s a bed back there.”

April Baer: You can hear their dogs—when they left their last rental Laural couldn’t bring herself to give up the dogs, she thought the kids would never forgive her. The trailer is packed with clothes, books, toys, food. Everything that should be in a house.

Laural Miller: "The part that drives me crazy is the dog hair. You can’t vacuum. Dog hair was never an issue because you could always vacuum. But I have no electricity to plug a vacuum to, so....”

Turmoil has been part of the Millers' lives since Brian was deployed three times as an Army staff sergeant. But the question of how the family got to this point doesn’t have an easy answer.

Brian and Laural met in the army. When the war began Laural had been discharged and was home with their kids—then numbering four. Brian was making good money, and their lives were pretty stable. Then came the invasion, and the first deployment.

Brian Miller: “I was part of the family, but I was disconnected from everything else that was going on.  We’d try to use email to stay in contact, but contact with the kids was kinda hard, because they were usually in bed when I was talking to her.”

A lot of military families face this dilemma -- how to be truly close when you can only be together over the phone.

Laural Miller: “I miss you, I love you Daddy. (Laugh) I mean any cliché you can think of!”

Brian Miller: “Yeah, I’d just try to let Laural know I was OK, and I was concerned about her and the kids. If I told her how bad it was sometimes, it would just make it worse for her taking care of the kids.”

Brian’s natural reserve was reinforced by the knowledge that every word they said to each other was being monitored for security purposes.

Brian Miller: “Yeah, you pretty much know that they’re listening. If somebody said something, they’d just shut down the whole--it’s basically a giant switchboard they shut off and everybody’s phone goes dead. "

Laural Miller: “We’d joke about it if we said something risqué, we would say ‘Oh, I bet they have the best job in the military!’”

As much of a strain the war put on their marriage, there were good reasons to keep going. Brian had been with the Army almost twenty years, and was able to support his family financially. But running convoys through occupied Iraq was dangerous, and incredibly stressful. Over time, he had more trouble making sense of what he was doing.

Brian Miller: “I mean, at times it was great to be there, see the Iraqi people doing their election. It was an awesome feeling . But then you talk to some of these Iraqi people saying they had it a lot better off than they had before, when Saddam was in power, because of all the civil unrest and everything. So. It’s kind of confusing.”

Pressure back home was building, too. Laural had moved the family back to the States during Brian’s first deployment, and when Brian came home the first time, they settled near Brian’s new base, Fort Lewis, in Washington, not far from Olympia.

During Brian’s second deployment, Laural gave birth to their fifth child, Lucien. On top of raising the family, she was fighting constant dread about Brian’s safety.

Laural Miller: “I wasn’t healthy before he left. When I knew he was going on this third deployment, I went through bouts where I didn’t eat for a week. Classic depression, probably.”

Finally, four months into Brian’s third deployment, Laural checked herself into a hospital for psychiatric care. Within days, Brian came home, and decided to put in papers for his retirement.

It’s difficult to get statistics on how many discharged or retired service members have had marital troubles. But there’s ample anecdotal evidence that the Millers aren’t alone in their problems.

Benjamin Karney is a researcher at UCLA who specializes in marriage. He’s studied service members’ relationships, and how they’re affected by trauma.

Benjamin Karney: “People who suffer from mental health disorders, like depression, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder -- their families suffer. All those disorders affect emotional expression and responsiveness. Which means that maintaining intimacy with a partner -- as hard as it already is! -- is even harder for people who are suffering.”

Karney says these emotional disruptions make it that much harder for families trying to rebuild after a deployment.

Brian and Laural are dealing with a lot of problems right now.  But even as they deal with homelessness. they say they’re trying to do the best they can for their kids, and maintain some sense of normalcy. They’ve left the Fort Lewis area, and moved to Eugene, closer to Laural’s family.

Brian Miller: “I’m going to go talk to Lathan’s teacher.

Laural Miller: “OK. Did you....“

Brian Miller: “I called him earlier, he hasn’t called me back yet.”

Each weekday afternoon, they join a crowd of parents outside a Eugene elementary school, to pick up seven-year-old Lathan, and six-year-old Laran.

Laural Miller:  “What is he talking to the teacher about?”

Lathan Miller:  “I dunno. He told me to come outside to you.”

Laural Miller:  “Can you guess what he[‘s talking to your teacher about?”

Lathan Miller:  “Homework?”

Laural Miller:   “(giggle) You’re very smart!”

Lathan Miller:   “I returned it today, the stuff that I did....”

At this moment, they’re not a military family, or a homeless family. They’re just two more faces milling around under the yellow-leaved maples.

Brian Miller: “We’ve both been through a lot. I know that I’m not the same person I was before I left.  Three years apart. It changes you quite a bit.  She still seems like she’s there but there’s some pieces there I can’t relate to -- understand. She’s probably the same way about me.”

Laural Miller: “He’s very detached now. I’m probably a little detached too, but not so much with the children. We used to be best friends, and now we’re not. My best friend just doesn’t seem like he’s in there anymore.”

Geoff Norcross: That’s Laural Miller, and her husband Brian. OPB’s April Baer reported that story. April, what’s next for the Millers?

April Baer: Brian’s trying hard to move back into the civilian world, but -- Laural hinted at this -- he’s grappling with coping with Post Tramatic Stress Disorder. More on that next week.

Geoff Norcross:   Join us next Monday at this time for part two of our series. You can see pictures of the Millers and catch our series online, at opbnews.org. Thanks, April.

April Baer: My pleasure.