Letters act as ‘penance’ for Rep.
Jones writes to families of soldiers killed in action
RALEIGH, N.C. — On a Sunday morning more than two weeks after four U.S. soldiers were ambushed and killed in Niger, Rep. Walter Jones sat at the desk in his North Carolina office, doing what he has done more than 11,000 times in 14 years: signing letters to families of the dead troops.
“My heart aches as I write this letter for I realize you are suffering a great loss,” the letter begins.
It’s a form letter, but the Republican congressman signs each one personally — penance, he says, for voting yes for the Iraq war in 2002.
“For me, it’s a sacred responsibility that I have to communicate my condolences to a family,” Jones said in a telephone interview. “And it’s very special to me because it goes back to my regretting that I voted to go into the Iraq war.”
He gets permission from a military liaison who makes sure that family members want condolences from a congressman they likely never heard of. Then, from a desk drawer in his office in Greenville, he retrieves the same black ink fountain pen that he has used since he began this ritual years ago. In some cases, he sends letters to multiple relatives of a single soldier.
Jones’ letter-writing began in 2003 after he attended the funeral of Marine Sgt. Michael Bitz, who was killed in March 2003, not long after the Iraq war began.
He sat with Bitz’s widow, Janina, and watched as her young son played with a toy nearby during the service at Camp Lejeune, which is part of Jones’ district.
“And I felt the guilt, but also the pain of voting to send her husband as well as thousands of other military to a war that was unnecessary,” he said. “Obviously, the majority of these families will never know me and vice versa. But I want them to know that my heart aches as their heart aches.”
On Sunday, Oct. 21, Jones signed letters to the families of Sgt. La David Johnson and three other soldiers killed in a firefight with militants tied to the Islamic State group in Niger. He signed a total of eight letters that day, followed by evening Mass.
Janina Bitz-Vasquez, the widow of the Marine whose funeral triggered Jones’ epiphany, won’t say if she supports Jones’ stance on the war. She said she’s honored that he continues to honor the families of dead service members.
“He may not be able to stop the war because of it,” she said in an interview from Hobart, Tasmania, in Australia, where she lives with her second husband, a retired U.S. Marine, and four children — three by her first husband and one by her second. “But it’s honoring to the spouses. It’s honoring to the children. It’s honoring to the service members.”
More importantly, she said, it “sets a standard for taking personal responsibility and accountability” for other political and military leaders.
Jones, 74, was first elected to the House in 1994. He estimates that 70,000 or so veterans lived in his district in 2002.
Each day, Jones walks past a memorial in the hallway outside his office in the Rayburn Building showing the faces of about 580 Marines who were stationed at Camp Lejeune and who died in war.
Those who pass by “may not stop, but they’re going to look at those faces,” Jones said. “They might keep walking, but they’re going to see those faces.”