Marine Mom Forced To Choose Between Injured Son, Job

The law allows family members of injured service members up to 26 weeks unpaid leave to care for their loved one.

This is something every injured serviceman or woman's family needs to know. They do have rights under the law to protect their jobs. This is also something every parent should pay attention to. Think of how much you help your own adult kids. Getting them through college, supporting them when they don't make enough money on their jobs or when they lose the jobs. Helping them make car payments and insurance premiums. What average people are willing to do for their 20 something offspring's is astonishing but then add in when they are in the military and ended up wounded serving this country.

IED blasts have blown off limbs, bullets hit brains and other body parts and fires have burnt off skin. Add in the fear these parents have to go through when their kids are deployed and then the fear of the unknown when they are able to survive but then having to worry about keeping their jobs and paying their bills. It is a story that is repeated over and over again across the country.

Marine Mom Forced To Choose Between Injured Son, Job
By Nicole Ferguson

HOPKINSVILLE, Ky. – A Hopkinsville Marine mom said she was given an ultimatum in June. She could leave her injured son's bedside or lose her job.

"Before this happened I'd only missed a one day in over a year's time, and that was the day they put my mother on life support," said Susan Powell, a CNA at Western State Hospital. "I'd work overtime, never called in, so I just never thought they'd tell me my job was at risk."

On May 24, her 21-year-old son, Lance Corporal Franklin Powell, stepped on an IED in Afghanistan. Doctors determined much of the young Marine's leg would need to be amputated.

Powell said Western State Hospital had no problems letting her go to her son's bedside at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda Maryland on May 30.

The problems began a week into her second trip beginning June 16.

"They told me if I couldn't come back by Friday to work, my job would be terminated," said Powell of the phone call she received from Crown Services, a corporate office of Western State Hospital. "Once my situation allowed, I could come back and reapply."
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http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=12788050

Marine son is wounded, woman lobbies to expand family leave act

After Marine son is wounded, woman lobbies to expand family leave act
By Emily Brown ,Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Thursday, May 22, 2008


PITTSBURGH — Marcia Chmill was able to bring her son John, a corporal in the Marine Reserves, home to Pittsburgh after he had spent a month at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

He was alive. She was so happy, she never mourned the loss of her son’s left eye or dwelled on the fact that two-thirds of his left hand was gone. His physical therapy was going well. John was making progress after several surgeries. A halo stabilized his shattered right leg.

But then came her own setback.

Her employer, the University of Pittsburgh, denied her coverage under the Family and Medical Leave Act and said if she took any more time off to help her son, her job would be terminated. Her three-year battle was just beginning.

"How am I going to take care of my son?" Chmill asked. "In my heart I knew a mother can get her son to heal better [than a stranger] by tending to him."

She needed a lawyer to say her rights had been denied, but she could never get that confirmation. So she started writing letters and e-mails: one to the Department of Labor, one to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, one to the Chief of Naval Operations, one to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The list goes on, from congressmen and senators right up to the president.

Then she went to work taking care of her son.

John Chmill was bedridden and needed his mom to change the bandages on his hand, seal a plastic bag around his knee halo before he took a bath, put antibiotic drops in his eye socket and use a bone growth stimulator on his leg. He was on seven medications and needed transportation to regular doctor appointments.

The injuries were a result of a suicide bomb. His Marine Reserve truck company was activated in 2004 for a second tour, and he was attached to an Army brigade in Ramadi, Iraq, driving armored trucks with equipment or transporting soldiers on their missions.

While carrying about 20 soldiers in a seven-ton armored truck in November 2004, an Iraqi police car strapped with a bomb rammed into his driver’s side door. Amazingly, no one was killed. Chmill took the brunt of the hit, losing his left eye (which is now replaced by an acrylic eye) and all but the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. His right leg was shattered.
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http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54979