Publication Date: Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Our Town: Camping in Crawford
Our Town: Camping in Crawford
(August 31, 2005) by Don Kazak
When Nadia McCaffrey arrived in Crawford, Texas, Aug. 17 she didn't know what to expect. She flew to Texas to join her friend, Cindy Sheehan, who has been camped out near the entrance of President George W. Bush's ranch for most of August.
Like Sheehan, McCaffrey lost a son in Iraq.
Patrick McCaffrey, 34, had been the manager of Aikens Collision Center, a body shop on Park Boulevard in Palo Alto. He was called up as a member of the National Guard and deployed to Iraq in March 2004. He was killed in action three months later.
His mother met Sheehan last year.
"I needed to go," McCaffrey said when she heard about Sheehan camping out by the president's ranch. Sheehan made front-page news by wanting to ask Bush in person why her son died in Iraq. She has yet to get an answer.
"I wasn't sure what to expect," McCaffrey said of her visit. "It was amazing," she summed up afterward. People at the Crawford Peace House, a local peace center, have been providing transportation and meals for the protestors. The crowd usually numbers a couple of hundred during the week but swells to more than a thousand on weekends.
A local property owner donated an acre of land for the people to camp on -- right next to the entrance to Bush's ranch. People have planted hundreds of white crosses bearing names of American war dead, giving the area a cemetery-like feeling.
The protestors have been under heavy scrutiny from the press. Conservative and right-wing television pundits especially are challenging their motives and patriotism.
"It's our patriotic right to question the president," said Karen Meredith of Mountain View, who also has been in Crawford. Her son, Ken Ballard, was killed in Iraq in May 2004. She received the phone call telling her that her son was dead on May 31 -- Memorial Day -- last year.
Meredith, who also knows Sheehan, said she went to Texas last week because "I wanted people to know it wasn't just one crazy woman."
The mothers are members of Gold Star Families for Peace, a group that has a painful membership requirement: The loss of a family member in the war.
"I want an answer to the noble cause my son died for," Meredith said. She said the first explanation for the war was the search for weapons of mass destruction but that morphed into the war on terrorism.
"The best way to honor my son is to tell the truth," Meredith said. President Bush "never talks about the dead ones when he talks about honoring the troops," she said.
Another local woman also has been to Crawford: The protestors were entertained last week by folksinger Joan Baez, also a Midpeninsula resident and a veteran of protests of another war long ago. About 30 Gold Star families were among the crowd when Baez sang "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" People cried, Meredith recalled. A couple of nights later, Baez also moved the crowd by singing "Amazing Grace."
The war has become a rallying point for Bush supporters and opponents alike over an ever-widening gulf of disagreement.
"It's OK to disagree, as long as we keep on talking," Meredith said. "But the administration doesn't allow that. We don't see the caskets coming back home."
The mothers want to bring the troops home. They'd also like a word with the president.
As the hundreds of white crosses planted in the ground outside of the president's ranch signify, the mothers of fallen soldiers carry an enormous credibility in their arguments.
Sheehan's late son Casey, Patrick McCaffrey and Ken Ballard gave what Abraham Lincoln called "the last full measure of devotion" for their country, and their mothers want to know why.
It's a question not apt to soon go away.
When the president, his aides and the White House press corps decamp for Washington today, the protests will continue.
"We're not going to stop. We have the power to change people's minds," McCaffrey said.
"Cindy put the war in Iraq back on the front page," Meredith said.
And the mothers want it to stay there.
Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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