As reservist's travels take her around
the globe, son stays by her side
By Jan Wesner Childs,
Seoul bureau
Andy Dunaway / Stars and Stripes
Petty Officer 2nd Class Jeanette Loewke and her son, Justin. |
YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea — Navy reservist Jeanette
Loewke’s one-month tour in South Korea is a little tame compared with what she does
in the real world.
Here, Loewke spends her time running paperwork between offices at
Yongsan Garrison. Back home in New York, she’s a guard at Attica Correctional
Facility, one of the nation’s most notorious state prisons.
She’s been stabbed twice and had her nose broken.
“It’s very draining, emotionally and psychologically,
because you never know what’s going to happen,” Loewke said.
Wherever she is and whatever she’s doing, Loewke does her best
to keep her 11-year-old son Justin close by. She travels about three months out of the
year for the Reserves — and takes Justin with her most of the time.
Expanding horizons
A petty officer second class, the 44-year-old Loewke has been in the
Reserves for 15 years. As a Navy shopkeeper, she’s done a little bit of everything on
her Navy trips.
“I do whatever they need me to do,” she said.
“I’ve done everything from sort mail to running the barracks to loading
missiles.”
She’s in South Korea this month for Ulchi Focus Lens, the
biggest annual U.S. military exercise on the peninsula.
In Germany, Loewke worked for the Department of Defense Dependents
Schools, doing a study that compared DODDS high schools to stateside public schools.
She’s also done audits, and worked as a driver.
Loewke volunteers for several deployments every year. She regularly
checks the Navy Reserve Web site for openings, then sends off her résumé to see if
they’ll accept her.
She also consults with Justin, to see where he’d like to visit.
She takes him on 90 percent of her trips, at her own expense.
“We’ve been to Alaska, Hawaii, Denmark,” Justin said.
He easily rattles off a list of a dozen countries he’s visited
with his mom: Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Italy,
Austria, Canada, the Bahamas, Mexico and Great Britain.
“My favorite country is the U.K.,” Justin said. “Nice
people, good hotel, large city. I got to see interesting things.”
He and his mom rang in the year 2000 at London’s millennium
celebration.
But Justin only remembered London after thinking for several minutes.
“I forgot about London because I’ve been so many places
after that,” he said. Besides his international travel, Justin’s also been to
three-quarters of the states in the United States. His favorite is Hawaii, where he
learned to scuba dive and made some buddies with whom he regularly keeps in touch.
Justin started traveling with Jeanette when he was about 4. Sometimes
her father or aunt accompanies them, but many times it’s just the two of them. In
Seoul, Justin spends his days swimming, watching movies or playing Gameboy at the hotel.
At night and on the weekends they go sightseeing, or sometimes just to the movies or the
library on base.
Loewke, a single parent, started taking Justin along because she
couldn’t stand to be away from him. The older he gets, the harder she tries to keep
him close and make sure he doesn’t get in any trouble.
“I go on so many tours that I wouldn’t be there [for
him]," she said. “Talking to him on the phone is just not the same.”
But Justin knows not to get into any trouble when Mom is a prison
guard, she said.
Justin often misses several days of school, but he brings along
homework from his private school and keeps in touch via e-mail and fax.
“I find that traveling with him broadens his outlook on the
world,” she said.
“I’ve been quite fortunate,” Loewke said.
The other job
When she’s not working for the Navy, Loewke is a prison guard at
Attica, a maximum security prison near Buffalo, N.Y., best known for a bloody prison riot
in 1971 that ended with 32 inmates and 11 guards dead. “We have lifers, we have
murderers, everything,” Loewke said. “It’s the big house.”
Loewke has been a prison guard for 19 years. It’s the only job
she’s ever had, except for occasional part-time stints as a waitress or a night
watchman when she needed some extra money.
At Attica, Loewke is responsible for prisoners’ “care,
control and custody … everything from escorting them to chow, making sure they take
their medicine, making sure they’re complying with all facility rules.”
The job is part cop, part mom.
“If an inmate receives a Dear John letter, sometimes they want
to talk, sometimes they don’t,” she said.
“Our job is basically always watching for any kind of changes.
For example, if the yard gets quiet, you know there’s going to be trouble.”
She’s been at the receiving end of that trouble more than once.
She had her nose broken in 1982, when an inmate got mad at her and
another guard and started throwing barbells through a window.
The first time she was stabbed was in 1983, when she was breaking up
a fight between two female inmates.
The weapon was a “Romeo brush,” a toothbrush with a razor
blade attached to one end.
“They’re very ingenious when it comes to making
weapons,” Loewke said.
The second time was the next year, when a male prisoner stabbed her
in the chow hall. He was mad at Jeanette because she told him he was breaking prison rules
by having too many personal belongings in his cell.
“He was coming at me,” she said.
He stabbed her with a sharpened piece of wire from his mattress.
Jeanette was only slightly wounded and required a few stitches both
times.
Justin worries more about his mom traveling alone than he does when
she’s at the prison. He thought South Korea was dangerous because of North Korea. His
mom has been here five times before, without him. But now that he’s come, Justin said
he feels better.
Loewke plans to retire next year from the prison system and do even
more traveling with the Reserves, and with her son.
“We’ve both been to some unbelievable places and met some
remarkable people,” she said.
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