Starhill solidarity

My brother-in-law Michael James Leming, a Louisiana National Guard officer, got his deployment orders on Friday. He's shipping out to Baghdad, via a short training stint in Wisconsin, on July 15. That's later than we thought it would be, but that, of course, won't lessen his time there.

A really cool -- spectacularly cool -- thing happened last night for Mike. He lives, like my family, in Starhill, which we jokingly call a suburb of St. Francisville. St. Francisville's got only about 3,000 people in it, so you can imagine how small Starhill is. My late Uncle Murphy was the self-appointed Mayor of Starhill (which doesn't have a government, naturally); he was a real character. One night, during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80, he'd had a little too much bourbon and somehow used his connection with Sen. Russell Long to talk some poor staffer on the night shift at the State Department into giving him the private number of the Ayatollah Khomeini's palace in Qom. Murphy phoned the Ayatollah's place, finally got an English-speaking staffer on the phone, told him that the Republic of Starhill was breaking off diplomatic relations with Iran, and then gave the Khomeini staffer a good cussing. The phone bill came to around $100, but Murphy considered it money well spent.

(It will not surprise you to learn that Uncle Murphy and Aunt Patsy gave me "A Confederacy of Dunces" for Christmas the year it was published. He knew me well.)

Murphy also started a short-lived tradition called the Bopotamus Ball. He'd lead an annual hunt for the elusive bopotamus as a prelude to a big throwdown in honor of the non-existent creature. It was just an excuse to party, though once Murphy and his cronies dragged a TV crew from the ABC affiliate in Baton Rouge through the woods on the ritual bopotamus hunt. After Murphy died, they kept up the Bopotamus Ball for a few years. They don't do it anymore, but I tell you all this to give you an idea of the kind of community spirit there is where I grew up. This is a place where people know how to pass a good time.

But it's also a place where they know how to take care of business. Last night they had another big community party in Starhill -- this one in honor of Mike, my brother-in-law, as a farewell to him before he heads to Iraq. The men and women of Starhill had been quietly planning the affair for a couple of months, and keeping it quiet from Mike. It was a total surprise, then, when my sister Ruthie drove him over to a neighbor's house, and there he found a couple hundred of his friends and neighbors waiting to toast him. They had a live band, a bonfire, and two wild hogs killed on Cat Island that they roasted, cochon de lait-style. My sources tell me lots of beer was drunk, and that there was dancing late into the night out under the stars. The local state representative showed up and gave a short tribute speech to Mike (who must have died a thousand deaths; he is quiet and deeply humble by nature). The rep said that Mike shouldn't worry about his wife and girls being taken care of while he's in Iraq, that he (the rep) will be at the front of the line making sure groceries stay in the pantry and everything gets taken care of. Mike's a Baton Rouge firefighter by trade, and lots of his buddies from the fire station showed up to pay tribute to him too -- and according to my folks, all of them pledged to Mike that they would take care of my sister and the girls while he was away serving his country.

Some of Mike's National Guard friends who have already served a tour in Iraq came too. One by one, they made the same pledge: Don't worry about your family. Take care of business over there. We've got your back.

I wish I had been there to see and hear it. On second thought, it's probably best that I wasn't. I find it hard enough even to think about it without getting emotional. We hear a lot about how most Americans aren't sharing the sacrifices of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their families back home. But that's not true of the men and women of Starhill.