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March 20, 2003
Single mother in Deltona says airman son is ‘my mirror’
By LYDA LONGA | News-Journal Staff Writer
DELTONA — As cruise missiles and precision bombs began raining on Baghdad late Wednesday night, Maria Molina knelt in a Sanford church and prayed for her only son.
Hours earlier, the single mother of two children had received an e-mail from 24-year-old Odet Coudet, the young man she had raised to become a soldier.
By then, Molina knew that her oldest child, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force who is training to become a flight instructor, was somewhere in the Middle East preparing for battle with the other members of his unit from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City.
"The war started while I was in church and all I could say was 'It is God's will,' " Molina said Thursday morning from her home in Deltona. "I could not stay in the house and watch TV. I wanted to be with other people and pray for my son. That's the only way I can make it through this.
"I'm fine and that's all I want him to know," Molina said, holding back tears as she looked at an array of photographs of Coudet in uniform. "I want his mind to be clear because he worries too much about me as it is because of my health."
A native of the Bronx, Coudet wanted to be a soldier since he was 6 years old, Molina said. The young boy known as the "little gentleman" among family and friends was his mother's right hand, doing a lot of the cooking, cleaning and babysitting for his younger sister Erica while Molina worked the erratic hours of a nurse.
When Molina suffered two heart attacks recently, Coudet, whom she calls "my mirror," grew increasingly concerned for his mother's well-being, calling her constantly from the base and visiting her as often as he could.
"He always had this instinct of wanting to protect," Molina said. "And he said very early on that he wanted to be in the military so he could help protect this country."
But she says she does not want to know the specifics of her boy's whereabouts. Her days are spent cleaning the house and spiriting 17-year-old Erica off to various teenage activities.
"We can't stop to think about where he is, or what he is doing," Molina said. "If I stop, then I start crying."