She reminded him that he always wanted to be in the military, and even wanted to be a tanker since he was a small boy. “That’s what you wanted to do your whole life.”
He paused and reflected on what she said.
Adam seemed resigned to his situation. In the end, he decided to stay put in Alaska and bide his time until he was called up for battle again.
Cindy and Adam talked during the evening of August 29, 2004, when he was in his barracks in Fairbanks. He seemed upbeat and talked about preparing for a getaway with an Army friend during his off days. Cindy could rest that evening without worrying about his mood or career problems. He seemed to be working through his issues.
The following morning, at around eight, she got a call from her exhusband, Adam’s father, Jeff Gray. He lived in Wisconsin, where they were originally from. Adam’s parents were separated by thousands of miles but remained friends and kept in touch about their son’s welfare.
“Cindy, why would there be a soldier coming here?” Jeff asked Cindy.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she said. She assumed that Adam and his friends went off drinking the night before and got into trouble. “He’s probably coming to find out who wants to bail the kid out.”
They laughed about it, knowing their son’s pugnacious spirit. “Okay, I don’t have this kind of money,” she told Jeff, fearing how much bail they’d have to pay to spring Adam from a night in jail. “Maybe you could do it. And you’re closer to him; you could fly up there.”
In the end, she relented and agreed to come up with the cash. Jeff promised to call her back with an update after he met the officers at his door.
Cindy waited a long time for the phone to ring. When it finally did, she snatched up the receiver.
“Okay, how much do I owe you?”
Her offer was met with a halting silence. And then he told her.
“Adam’s dead.”
“What?”
Jeff repeated the words to her.
“Oh, bullshit. That’s not even funny. I just talked to him last night.”
But Jeff wasn’t kidding, and Cindy froze in stunned disbelief. No, they’ve got the wrong kid, she told herself. After all, Adam seemed to be in high spirits the night before. He was just heading off to bed so that he and his friend could get up early for their trip.
That might have been the case, said Jeff, but the officers who had just visited him said they were sending someone from Edwards Air Force Base to Cindy and Roy’s house in Tehachapi to relay the news about their son.
Cindy waited by the door and held her breath as she peered through the window and watched the cars drift by. One finally pulled into her driveway. Two uniformed officers got out and walked towards the house.
“Then I knew it wasn’t a lie,” she said.
I visited Cindy in August 2007 just a few days before the anniversary of her son’s death. It had been three years since officers walked to her door. Her memories were still fresh, her emotions still raw.
She remembered that a chaplain accompanied the military entourage, and how they greeted her. They could tell she was distraught and sensed she had already learned the news about her son.
“Well, by now, I’m sure you heard…” they began. “We’re very sorry.”
Cindy understood they had a difficult job, but she felt their delivery was cold and rehearsed.
“Then they get up and leave,” she recalled. “You’re in absolute, absolute devastation and shock. You don’t really know what they just said.”
Shortly thereafter, a casualty advisor showed up with a thick stack of documents that Cindy had to fill out. It took until late in the evening. “And you don’t sleep because you’re just entering into the worst nightmare of your life,” she said.
Gradually, she summoned the strength to ask how to deal with her son’s remains and assemble a memorial for him. They held a service in Wisconsin, and later a second one in California. A handful of servicemen came by, some from Adam’s unit, and paid their respects. Much of that period remains a blur to Cindy.
Adam’s fellow unit members were also stunned by the news of his death. They remembered his high energy and his enthusiasm for the Army, and would never expect that his life would end so tragically back in the States. There was disbelief, followed by questions about what had happened. Roy sought out answers at Adam’s funeral to clarify what exactly had occurred at Fort Wainwright. Until that time, they only had murky details about Adam’s death.
“We were under the impression it was a self-inflicted gunshot [or] accidental death,” said Roy. “I had to be prepared to find out as much as I could before [Cindy] did.”
Roy approached Richard Boone, one of Adam’s friends from Fort Wainwright. Boone, too, was a sergeant, and a loyal soldier. He wanted to be faithful to his friend’s family by helping answer their questions, but there was an open investigation into Adam’s death, so Boone told Roy that he couldn’t discuss what went on in Alaska. Roy pressed on.
“I’m not here to crucify anyone,” he told Boone. “See that lady?” said Roy, pointing to Cindy. “I gotta get through this with her. I need to be prepared. I just need to know what happened.”
It turned out that Cindy and Roy had mistakenly believed that Adam had shot himself. It was difficult for Boone to describe what had happened: Adam was found in bed with a plastic bag twisted over his head, and beside him sat a can of Dust-Off (compressed gas used for cleaning electronics).
Roy took a deep breath. Oh crap. We’re in for a long haul, he said to himself. He saw Adam’s father, grandmother, and friends, and he felt he couldn’t—and shouldn’t—divulge what he learned, fearing it would only traumatize them further.
“I wish I didn’t know,” said Roy. “It was like the devil dropped something on me. I knew his mom. She was going to want to know who was responsible and why. To watch her ask questions when I could have answered them …” Roy’s eyes watered and his voice trailed off as he remembered that time.
The Iraq war exacted a heavy toll on its veterans. Many turned to substance abuse, and suicides gradually mounted.3 The numbers of soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) steadily climbed.4
And, as with Vietnam veterans, soldiers who return with PTSD can also transfer some of their distress onto their families.5 Cindy and Roy Chavez were no different.
“We’re human beings, and we find ways to numb ourselves,” said Roy. He later told me how he and Cindy tried to blunt their pain with alcohol after Adam died. But Cindy’s intake turned toxic. According to Roy, she landed in the hospital for twenty-seven days because of “a broken heart and alcohol.”
“It was a scary time. A scary time,” said Roy. “You sit there and go, ‘Oh the war’s going to take another person—my wife. And I’m going to be all alone.’ ”
Cindy ultimately recovered from her stay in the hospital, and her sharp decline from depression and alcohol became a stiff wake-up call for her and Roy. Afterwards, they agreed to swear off drinking from that point on. Cindy even pursued grief counseling in Tehachapi and felt it helped her better cope with the extreme pain she felt. But she couldn’t put aside her questions about the circumstances of her son’s death.
“It became her quest to find out,” said Roy.
“You just want to know why is your child dead,” Cindy said. “I know there’s more to this story, I just don’t know how to get it. And I’m not going to give up until I find out. I’m afraid as the years go by it will all disappear.”
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