India Herbs

Publication: Star Tribune

Author: Chris Merrill

Date: February 12, 2007 

RIVERTON — Chance Phelps was the comedian and prankster of the family (and later of his Marine unit) who could do spot-on impersonations of Jim Carrey and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a young man who could alter his voice and accent with such skill that he fooled even his mother and sister over the telephone.

And once, in a slightly elaborate prank, he convinced his Marine recruiter, Gunnery Sgt. Charles White, that his personal phone calls were being monitored by naval intelligence at the Pentagon.

Less than two years ago, Gretchen Mack’s son, Pfc. Chance R. Phelps, was killed in action in Al Anbar province, Iraq on April 9, 2004, three months before his 20th birthday.

These days, it is Chance’s mother who is in action. She has started the Chance Phelps Foundation and is beginning a three-and-a-half-month walk. She leaves today from Twentynine Palms, Calif., where she last saw her son before he deployed to Iraq. The journey will take her across six states on foot — through several towns that Chance loved and once called home — with the hope of arriving in Dubois on Memorial Day.

“It’s a way for me to express how I felt about him,” Mack said last week at her rural Riverton home.

Since her son’s death, walking has become her way of coping. It helped her to emerge from her depression, and now the daily strolls help her to stay afloat emotionally. Walking has become something positive in her life, which she now wants to use to honor Chance’s memory.

On her trek across the western United States, Mack hopes to raise $1 million to help wounded soldiers and their families. Her daughter, Kelley Orndoff, is accompanying her on the journey. Orndoff flew in from Germany, where her husband is stationed. Joining them on their walk are their two dogs, including Kelley’s boxer, who also made the flight from Germany.

Choosing action

It is an impossible question. Most people are lucky enough never to have to consider it. How do you cope with the death of your child?

Ultimately, Mack and her family have decided to celebrate Chance’s life and spirit. Mack has chosen to embrace life through movement, and personal growth. She has gone back to school to learn photography, taken up gardening, and she spends as much time outside as possible.

She has chosen action over passivity. She says it’s what Chance always wanted for her. No matter how tired she was, or how difficult things got, Chance always encouraged her to seize the moment, to do rather than to think about doing. It’s the way he lived his own life.

As a senior in high school, he joined the Marines. It was just something he knew he had to do, and there would be no debating about it.

The spring of 2004 marked a decisive moment in the war, when Shiite and Sunni militias entered the conflict, and experts started debating whether Iraq had fallen into civil war. That spring started with the murder and public mutilation of four private contractors in Fallujah. The fighting got uglier in the beginning of April.

Chance’s unit was acting as provisional military police outside of Baghdad when his convoy was ambushed. That day he had volunteered to operate the .50-caliber machine gun in the turret of the leading vehicle. His job was to return fire, to lay down cover for the convoy, which he did until he was fatally wounded.

Mack had no answer for the news. How do you cope with something like that? The honest answer is, you don’t. Because you can’t. At least not at first. In many ways, with the death of her son, Mack’s life came to a halt. She couldn’t bear to go back into work at the hospital, where she’d served as a central sterile technician for years. For a time she couldn’t even get out of bed.

Several of Chance’s fellow Marines attended his memorial service and have contacted her and her family. One Marine whom she didn’t even know approached her at the service and told her, “You look just like Phelps,” and embraced her. Gretchen hears frequently about how much Chance meant to “his guys.” They’ve told her stories, for example, about when morale was bad, how Chance would light up a cigar and start talking like Arnold, and crack everybody up.

According to Orndoff, many of the Marines from Chance’s division remain in frequent contact with her mother.

“They call her �Mom,’”Orndoff said. “She’s like the Marine Corps mom, now.”

Personal, not political

Like her son did, Mack supports the war and the U.S. government’s decision to go to war. But she believes that what she is doing with the Chance Phelps Foundation, and her 1,500-mile walk, transcends popular politics. She doesn’t envision her journey to be a political act.

“It’s personal,” she said. “It’s a way for me to express how I felt about him � and it’s a way for people to reach out and help each other. It’s a way for me to heal up and honor him, and hold up all these young men and women and their families and help them.

“It’s too easy to get angry. If people concentrated a little more on doing positive stuff, figuring out ways they can help people who need it instead of just getting angry, I think we’d get (a lot more accomplished).”

It is not Mack’s cause to engage in political debate about the war. Instead, she wants to raise awareness about the financial struggles of returning servicemen and women and their families, and she wants to raise money to help alleviate those struggles.

“It’s for the wounded guys coming back,” Orndoff said.

“They make no money,” Mack said. “The money is just a huge issue for me � You go to Iraq, you get hurt, you come home. You’re at a hospital and your leg’s blown off. You maybe have a wife, you maybe have children — they want to see their dad. Well, Mom’s still got to work; Dad’s not drawing a paycheck now. What if Mom and the kids want to see him? She has to take off work, they have to buy a plane ticket, they have to get a motel room — they have to do all that just to be with you. We want to help you take care of that.”

Mack said that many people aren’t informed about how low the pay is for military personnel. “They don’t realize that there are soldiers whose families are on food stamps. That’s just wrong.”

For Mack, support for the troops includes helping them and their families to deal with the toll that the war takes at home, after they come back. This is the assertion, also, of Kristen Henderson, author of “While They’re at War: The True Stories of American Families on the Homefront.” In her Feb. 9 New York Times op-ed piece, Henderson wrote in support of U.S. citizens helping with the soldiers’ costs: “It’s about reducing human suffering. And for everyone who claims to �support the troops’ — peace activists and war supporters alike — put your money where your bumper stickers are.”

Mack said those interested in doing just that can visit www.run4chance.com. At the same Web site people can see recent pictures and occasional videos of her and her daughter’s progress, and can download a Google Earth virtual tour of the walking route.

After this walk, Mack hopes to continue organizing local walks to raise money for military families in Wyoming. Before that, however, she has 1,574 miles to cover. She’s walking for Chance, and for the opportunity to help soldiers and families who need it.

“It’s a healing thing,” she said. “To heal me and to heal them.”

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