Lessons of the road

MARION, Ill. -- Julie Curtis is living proof good soldiers can come in small packages.

The 5-foot-3 staff sergeant weighed 89 pounds when she led convoys of 18-wheelers through the dangerous streets and highways of war-torn Iraq during her 13 months of "boots on ground" service in the National Guard's 1221st Transportation Company out of Dexter, Mo.

Despite her diminutive size, the 35-year-old Cairo, Ill., native led the line hauls of 10 to 20 trucks carting ammunition, water, equipment, rations, MREs, tents and any other items needed by troops.

"I got pretty good with the roads and maps," Curtis said. "It was a lot of responsibility with long hours, but you got to see it all as a truck driver."

That included efforts by insurgents to ambush her company.

"We got into a couple of ambushes," she said. "We got it once at a road block. We all had to dismount from the trucks. We sent a gun truck up front and we all took the ground. They could tell they were overmatched -- there were just four of five of them and about 50 of us with guns. It just stopped."

The company also had a close call at Baghdad International Airport when insurgents tried to breach the wall. "Mortar rounds were coming in, left and right," she said.

Curtis and company made it safely back to U.S. soil in July. She said her time in Iraq was hard for the husband and two children she left behind for her service to the country. "We were on the road and didn't have access to e-mail and phones a lot of the time. My oldest, who's 13, dealt with it pretty well, but Mama's baby -- he's 10 now -- it was rough on him. His grades went down for a while, but now that Mama's back home, he's doing better," Curtis said.

'Could feel your skin frying'

She left the Guard in November with a new appreciation of life in the United States.

"I hated the dirt there. I know everyone talks about the sand, but for me it was the dirt. The wind would pick it up and blow it on you all the time. You were miserable and filthy," she said. "Actually, make that dirt-slash-heat. It was 120 to 130 degrees. We had a thermometer bust one time. If you stood outside in the sun, you could feel your skin frying."

Her experiences in Iraq left her a better person, more independent and grateful for the little things in life, she said.

"When you have everything taken away from you and there are days when you don't know whether you'll ever get home or not, you really start to appreciate what you've got," Curtis said. "One night after I got home, I was lying in bed watching TV, the wind was blowing and it was raining and I thought, 'This is good.'"

Her new independence prompted her to say yes when her brother, Craig Rose, offered her an employment proposition. Rose recently purchased the former Kaeser Lumber in Marion and asked his sister to join him in the business, now called Mid Valley Building Center, Inc. along with its subsidiary, Mid Valley Wholesale.

Curtis has a bachelor's degree from Southeast Missouri State University in industrial technology and has years of experience in design and sales. Rose also has experience, having owned a lumber yard in Mounds, Ill., for the past seven years, a business that will not be affected by his expansion into Marion.