Windsor Terrace is a quiet section of Brooklyn where war isn’t far from people’s minds.
The neighborhood has sent more than its share of young men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan – in 2003 the New York Times reported that seemingly everyone in Windsor Terrace “seems to have a relative or neighbor who is actually in combat or could soon be.”
Now, in the wake of President Obama’s announcement that all American combat troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year, the impact of that decision is being felt with particular resonance at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church on Fort Rockaway Parkway. “Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who’s lost somebody,” says Sister Mary Ann Ambrose.
She recalls her first week at the church in 2006, when Captain John McKenna was killed in Afghanistan. “Everybody felt it,” she says. “He was the neighborhood boy.”
Captain McKenna was buried at Immaculate Heart of Mary. The church, which can hold up to a thousand people, was packed to capacity for his funeral mass. There are still yellow ribbons on trees near the church in his memory.
The nephew of another nun had 90 percent of his body burned in combat in Iraq. Sister Ambrose also lost someone she cared for: her former student, Pfc. Le Ron Wilson, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. He was 18, at the time the youngest soldier killed in Iraq.
“He was a nice kid, talented,” she says. “A great artist.”
In her desk drawer, she keeps a pin with his photograph in uniform: “Pfc Le Ron Wilson – 11/16/88- 07/06/07”.
Sister Ambrose found out about his death while listening to the radio in her car. “I can still see myself behind the wheel,” she says. “When they said he was the youngest soldier to have been killed, I immediately thought of him. Then, they said his name.”
Since 2005, the church has used Lent as a time to commemorate the war – marking the Stations of the Cross around Afghanistan and Iraq. Last year, Reverend Sebastian Muccilli cited the story of a ten-year old Afghan boy, Mohammed Noor, who lost his eyes and his hands after a bomb struck his home.
“As you pray each Station,” he wrote, “please keep Mohammed in mind – and all the other children – and adults – who have become victims of US military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Include in your praying the many seriously wounded and maimed casualties of those of every nation involved in the conflict – and all those mourning dear ones killed in the war.”
Looking at a photo of Mohammed on her computer, Sister Ambrose explains that these Stations of the Cross were intended to make the community “aware that normal people live in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
But death is not the only way the war has been felt by this congregation. “We have a baby en route,” Sister Ambrose says. The father is currently in Afghanistan, and Immaculate Heart of Mary is planning the baptism around his upcoming two-week leave. It is not the first time the church has accommodated religious occasions to the needs of its soldiers’.
Sister Ambrose says the families are “excited,” about the final troop draw down in Iraq – though, she says, “they live these days knowing nothing is a sure thing.” Another 60 days to go: it’s only fair that the soldiers’ return to their families for Christmas provokes what she calls a “tempered joy.”
“Still,” she adds, “imagine the gift that would be.”
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