Guarding together

Mother-daughter duo Kari and Jennifer Boettcher recently joined Missouri National Guard and volunteered for deployment

For the Boettcher family, service to the country is also a family affair. Kari Boettcher joined the U.S. Army at age 23, after her father and older brother. She later married Timothy Boettcher, also in the Army. Kari was in the Army for 10 years and out for 12 before joining the Missouri National Guard at age 43. Her 19-year-old daughter, Jennifer, joined the Guard in 2008 after graduating from Perryville High School, and now her 18-year-old daughter, Recena, is thinking of joining. And when Kari -- who had been deployed while in the Army -- volunteered for deployment with the National Guard, Jennifer was right along with her.

Jennifer, a cook, hopes to train and be deployed along with her mother, a medic. They are currently on a waiting list and began soldier readiness processing in April. Jennifer started training this summer.

"It's something different," says Jennifer. "I had thought about it before because I knew that I could get deployed, so it doesn't bother me." Jennifer, who was born on an Army base in Schweinfurt, Germany, says her mother is a big reason for her decision to join the National Guard.

"Since I was born in the military, I've always been around it," says Jennifer. "Mom is happy with it and she wants to do it. I thought if it makes her happy, it would for me, too." Jennifer hopes to become an anesthesiologist someday, and knows that the Guard will help pay for her education. Kari is happy about this fact, but as a service veteran of many more years, she knows the National Guard has plenty more to offer.

"I think everyone should graduate and then do at least two years of service," she says. "A lot of young kids have it so good they don't even know it. They have no clue how other people live ... It makes you grow up and learn responsibility. There's no messing around." Kari has done border patrol in Arizona, dental work in Honduras and fixed roads and schools in the Dominican Republic. She went to Kuwait in 1994 as part of the first Persian Gulf War, and served in Iraq in 2007. She's lived on Army bases in Fort Drum, N.Y., and Fort Stewart, Ga., and has been to school three times in Fort Sam Houston, Texas. She recalls that the people in Honduras sucked on sugar cane and didn't know what a toothbrush was, while people in Iraq built houses out of sand. In many countries, water is scarce and showers are even scarcer. Most of the world does not have the daily luxuries of clean water, fresh laundry, and abundant food. Instead, they dress in rags and feed themselves from bone-thin cows and gardens planted in the sand.

"It was disgusting," says Kari. "Nothing was sanitary." Still, she adds, "I like to see how other people live, and I like to help them." That's why she didn't think twice about joining the National Guard four years ago and volunteering for deployment in the spring. Meanwhile, Jennifer has not spent much time outside of small-town Altenburg, Mo., where she lives, and Frohna, Mo., where the family owns and operates the East Perry Pub -- but she's excited to travel the world with the National Guard.

"I hope to help people and show people that people just like me are the reason we have what we do -- the freedom to fight for what we have," says Jennifer.