When Staff Sgt. Bruce Wisor was deployed for 12 months to Camp Speicher, Iraq, with the Colorado National Guard, he left behind his wife, Cindi, and three boys.
On Tuesday, Cindi Wisor sat in the ballroom of the Denver Marriott Tech Center, camera in hand, as her husband and 101 of his colleagues from the guard’s 169th Fires Brigade were welcomed home by Gov. Bill Ritter.
While her husband was gone, Cindi Wisor – who describes herself as a “full-time mom” – devoted herself to her three sons, Alex, 13; Tyler, 11; and Danny, 5.
“It was pretty hard, especially with the 13-year-old,” Wisor said. “But the boys knew it was something he had to do.”
“We tried to keep things as normal as possible – playing football and baseball. That’s what you have to do. You can’t just sit at home,” she said.
Camp Speicher is near Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, an area fiercely loyal to Hussein. Many Tikritis served in Hussein’s elite Republican Guards.
Wisor said that although Speicher is a military compound, any camp in Iraq is in “hostile” territory. Her husband regularly heard gunfire and mortars. But being in the camp, he could e-mail his family regularly and talk to her and the boys by phone about twice a week.
Dozens of family members were in the ballroom as Ritter welcomed the troops back.
He praised the sacrifice of the soldiers and their families. He noted that in the room there were “moms and dads, husbands and wives and children who for a long time have gone without these soldiers in their homes.
“That is a very significant sacrifice we should be mindful of,” the governor said.
Among family members present was Caryn Brainard, who is finishing her final year of veterinary school at Colorado State University.
Her husband, Timothy Brainard, was the lead convoy truck driver for the Colorado Guard any time it ventured out on the road, on trips ranging from 15 to 200 miles.
During their deployment, no one in the Colorado contingent was killed or injured – something Ritter called “nothing short of a miracle.”
But the worry was always there.
“It was hard,” Caryn Brainard said. She was not only worried about her husband, but also about going to school and taking care of the couple’s assorted four-legged friends, including two horses, two dogs and two guinea pigs.
“I had to go about it about the same as usual. But I was distracted – just worried about him,” she said.
On Tuesday, the couple kept hugging each other, something that goes back to their days in Middleboro, Mass., where they were junior-high and high-school sweethearts.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
