CHAMPION - Just last month, Jason Litz returned home after a nearly yearlong tour in Kuwait, Iraq, and the United States with the Ohio Army National Guard.
Before that, there was another tour - this one from October 2001, a month after the terrorist attack, to July 2002.
And Litz, a 28-year-old staff sergeant with the Guard's 135th Military Police Company based near Cleveland in Brook Park, is ready to go again if called on. He thinks it could possibly happen in the next several months.
This is what I do; this is what I enjoy
he said from his hometown about 45 miles southeast of Cleveland.
Even his wife, Melissa, 28, is ready if her husband gets called again.
Everybody learns to adjust. Even the kids. They go with the flow she said.
Litz is one of the 2 to 5 percent of military men and women who have been double tapped or assigned to serve lengthy tours overseas with few breaks in between. About 3,000 of the 15,000 Ohio Army and Air National Guard members have been deployed in the war effort.
Guard spokesman James Sims said many MPs have been called to active duty several times in the past three years as America tightens security in the United States and abroad.
The couple got married in 1995 after Litz finished a yearlong tour in South Korea, so they are used to long separations.
Even though he is taught to separate thoughts about his family from his job, he said this last deployment was hard. The couple have three sons, Kyle, 7; Evan, 4; and Colin, 16 months.
The deployment meant being away from his growing family and missing Colin's birthday, said Litz, who is about halfway through the 20-year military career he has planned.
When he returns home from a lengthy activation, the couple picks up where things left off, his wife said.
We don't have to take a couple of days and rehash everything that's gone on
she said.
While he is gone, she serves as mother and father to the boys while working several days a week as a nurse at Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital.
The days go by
slowly at times
but they go by
she said.
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