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April 3, 2003
Scrapbook keeps Tracee Schiller in touch
By JAMES MILLER | News-Journal Staff Writer
ORMOND BEACH — At work at her father-in-law's business in Palm Coast, Tracee Schiller keeps up with the news of the Iraq war on television.
Scrapbook |
Her husband, Gary Schiller, 23, is an Aviation Ordnanceman Third Class aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Oman.
At home with her parents in Ormond Beach, 22-year-old Tracee Schiller watches less of the war on TV.
"We have dinner, then I go to my mom's room and scrapbook," she said.
These days, she puts in photos from her husband's April 2002 induction into VFW Post 1590 in Daytona Beach.
Gary Schiller spent several months at sea in Operation Enduring Freedom after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
"We're just doing his military career-type stuff – pictures, any letters he gets from his commanding officers, those kinds of things," Tracee's mother, Carole Burns, said.
"They've missed so many holidays. In three years of marriage, they've had one Christmas together," Carole Burns said.
Tracee Schiller put a photo of her husband down on the kitchen table.
In it, he has on the red over-garment that ordnancemen wear, and he's pulling a missile on wheels behind him.
It was a light moment, a "bomb race," Tracee said.
"Everything's a game at first, isn't it?" her father, Jim Burns, piped in.
Jim Burns and his wife are acutely aware of the implications of war.
"Being of the baby boomer generation, we'd hate to see another Vietnam, but it has an inkling of that," Carole Burns said.
"I don't know anything of Vietnam," Tracee Shiller said, "so I have no comparison at all." But the conflict with Iraq triggered her political interest. "I went out and registered to vote a couple of months ago," she said.
Has she decided what she thinks about this war?
"Not yet," she said.
One thing's clear, though.
"Gary's the hero in our family," Jim Burns said. "As far as I'm concerned, he can do no wrong."