Soldier's wife fights for wounded, families

[babylonsister]

Soldier's wife fights for wounded, families
By BARBARA BARRETT
MCT

Washington --
Sarah Wade's phone rang the night before her usual shift as a waitress and bartender at a Chapel Hill restaurant. It was her boss. He said he had to let her go.

Wade, 32, has told this tale often, and she offered it again last week, speaking into a microphone before members of Congress. Her boss, she recalled, said Wade "had too much going on" in her life - what with her husband missing a right arm and brain-injured because of a bomb blast in Iraq.

Lawmakers and young staffers gasped. She was here to argue for legislation that would allow family members to leave their jobs for six months to care for troops wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Her husband sat behind her, smiling with patient eyes, his prosthetic arm resting in his lap. Sgt. Edward "Ted" Wade, 29, couldn't begin to keep up with his wife's words. His sentences come slowly as his blast-injured brain struggles to fire the synapses to execute his thoughts.

This is how the couple often works, Sarah making the arguments about what needs to change, her husband a quiet symbol for the system's failings. For the first two years after his injury, she fought for him.

Now she wants to fix things not only for Ted but for other veterans who don't have a voice. Returning to Washington again and again, she walks the halls of Congress and makes calls up the chain to someone's boss's boss.

more...

http://www.bnd.com/273/story/139092.html

[provis99]

1. its sad there's even a need for this type of activism

[Solly Mack]

2. K/R

Thank you, babylonsister