United in Pain, Divided Over the War

• Share

(2 of 2)

Long before his son Ben appeared as the quiet lieutenant in the documentary Gunner Palace, long before a Baghdad bomb took Ben's life on Nov. 1, 2003, the elder Colgan, of Kent, Wash., was an antiwar activist, a member of the Catholic peace group Pax Christi. But Ben's independent streak led him to join the Army just out of high school. His death has made Colgan's personal pacifism surprisingly divisive. While Colgan and his wife Pat remain opposed to the war, Ben's widow Jill and other family members are equally ardent supporters. "I didn't think this would be so difficult," he says. "It's one of the saddest things. It's put a crimp in our relationships." Colgan says he sees very similar dysfunction in the national feuding over Iraq. "You've got the whole line that speaking out against the war is dishonoring the dead," he says. "It's stupid that we can't talk."

"IF [SHEEHAN] WANTS TO DO THIS FOR HERSELF, FOR HER BROKEN HEART, THEN SHE SHOULD. BUT IT WON'T HELP THE PAIN. NOTHING WILL."

JEANETTE URBINA

The sorrowing mother from North Baldwin, N.Y., never cared much for debating the wisdom of the war. Nine months after the death of her only son Wilfredo, 29, a specialist killed by a roadside bomb on Nov. 29, 2004, Urbina looks at Sheehan's protest in Crawford through the lens of personal pain, not presidential politics. "It doesn't matter what the government changes," she says. "They can bring everybody home today, but they can't bring her son back." Urbina's Long Island community came together to mourn Wilfredo, a volunteer fire fighter, but his mother says that plaques and parades do nothing to ease the heartbreak of losing a son. "They hand me these awards, but my arms are empty," she says, "because I don't have my boy." She doesn't know if the Bush Administration was right to start the war, but she says the economics of sacrifice dictate that the U.S. needs to finish it. "The mothers have paid so much for this war," she says. "I just want it to be a success now, so all this pain will be worth it." --By Nathan Thornburgh. With reporting by Polly Forster/Portland and Maggie Sieger/Grand Rapids