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Politics
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Widow Grieves Over Young Love Cut Short by War
Maryland Newsline Friday, March 4, 2005
LEONARDTOWN, Md. – There is no closure for Crystal Faulstich. Seven months after her husband’s death in Iraq, she shares an apartment with a friend. She does not have a job. She is not in school. She shops, she cleans the apartment, and she watches TV.
“I stay at home most of the time,” the 20-year-old widow said. Her doctor suggests she go for counseling, but she refuses. “I don’t like counselors,” she said. “I just don’t see how they know what I’m going through.” Her husband, Pfc. Raymond J. Faulstich Jr., was killed at 2:05 p.m. Aug. 5, when a convoy of trucks, one driven by him, came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades and small arms in Najaf, Iraq, said Army spokeswoman Lt. Col. Pamela Hart. Faulstich was 24. His wife and father, Raymond Faulstich Sr., said military officials told them he had been shot through the side -- attempting to deliver critical supplies and repair parts to the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Army confirmed Faulstich returned fire with his automatic weapon, attempting to protect the rest of the soldiers in his convoy. Today, Crystal Faulstich wears around her neck the dog tags her husband was wearing when he was killed. She says she has put on a lot of weight. The government sends her death benefits of a little under $1,000 a month, and Anheuser-Busch has sent her a check for $11,000 as part of a corporate program to support the spouses of fallen servicemen and women. But she has not gotten over him – just as in life, he never got over her. Turning Around Family members agree she made him want to be a better man. Before Raymond Faulstich Jr. met Crystal Wathen, he had dropped out of high school, worked a series of jobs that went nowhere, and hung out with a crowd that wasn't taking him anywhere. He was into marijuana and cocaine, his father said. He became a bricklayer, a short-order cook and a landscaper. He worked at a Ford dealership and installed siding. He held none of the jobs for very long. Eventually, he wound up in court. He was found guilty of possession of marijuana, of theft less than $300, and of malicious destruction of property of less than $300 during a four-month stretch in 2000, according to records at the District Court of Maryland in Leonardtown. He was given probation in all cases.
Then he met Crystal, and all that changed, his family said. They met at her parents’ house some time in 2001. He was hanging out with one of her foster brothers, she recalled. “I went downstairs, and I seen him there, and we just started talking,” she said. “At first I was attracted to his looks, because he was really sexy.” A boyhood friend, Curtis Cook, remembered Faulstich talking about Crystal at a barbeque in 2001. “I didn't know much about her, only her name, but Ray seemed to really be interested and kind of hinted that he was going to let her influence him, and I thought that would be a good thing if she could get him on the right track,” Cook wrote in an e-mail. Crystal soon laid down the law. It was drugs and his old crowd, or her, she recalled. “I told him he had to choose, and he chose me,” she said. Inspired by her brothers, four of whom were in the military, and encouraged by Crystal, Faulstich began seriously contemplating a career in the Army, family members said.
“I think that radical change was the only way he saw to get him away from the rut he was in,” Faulstich Sr. said. "Crystal was the influence that motivated him." At first Faulstich was rejected by the military because he lacked a high school diploma. He had dropped out of Leonardtown High School a month before graduation in 1999. But the young man who previously had not shown interest in much of anything suddenly began to persist. He got a General Equivalency Diploma and some community college classes and went back, and the Army enlisted him. Then Crystal married him. He proposed on Valentine’s Day 2003, a little more than a month before he enlisted in the Army. On Aug. 29, 2003, the couple went to the St. Mary’s County Court House in Leonardtown and got married - two months after Crystal graduated from Leonardtown High School. He was 23, she was 18. She brought two friends with her. “Nobody else knew. We kept it from everybody,” she said. He was stationed in Fort Eustis, Va. Crystal moved down with him and they got an apartment near the base. She did not blink at being married while still in her teens. “I loved it,” she said. They had a private’s salary, and the free time they had they spent on road trips. “In Virginia that’s mainly all we did, because we didn’t have much money,” she said.
Shipping Out On June 9, 2004, he got called up to Iraq. “He only got seven days’ notice to go to Iraq,” she said. “We had seven days to pack up our apartment and everything.” When he was a boy of about 4 he wanted to drive trucks – trash trucks, fire trucks, any kind of truck, said his mother, Linda Faulstich. In Iraq he got to do it. He was driving trucks by day and conversing with his wife via e-mail and a Web cam at night. Crystal said she thinks he was frightened. “Whenever he would go on missions and stuff he’d say, 'I love you. This might be the last time I talk to you.' " Cook, who was getting updates periodically, was happy that his friend was driving trucks.
“I thought he did the smart thing by staying in the transportation corp[s],” he wrote. “Little did I know that the convoys were the things that were getting attacked.” Breaking Down On Aug. 6, a Friday, Faulstich Sr. was fixing rain damage to the dirt road outside his house in Leonardtown when he saw a car pull up in his driveway. At first he was unsure what was going on. But he soon caught on. “Two guys in full dress uniform got out. By that time, I knew what it was,” he said. He called Crystal on her cell phone. She was with her friends at Kings Dominion, an amusement park in Virginia. He told her to come over. When she arrived she initially thought her husband was home early. When they told her he was dead, she froze into denial. “I didn’t believe it,” she said. When reality seeped in, she collapsed. “She just sat down in the driveway and cried and cried,” Faulstich Sr. said. On Aug. 16, 2004, Faulstich was buried at St. John Francis Regis Roman Catholic Church in Hollywood, where he had spent a great deal of his childhood --and where Father Ronald Potts, who taught him religion in the sixth grade, remembered him as a quiet student and attentive altar boy. The rosary that he carried in his pants pocket in Iraq went with him into the grave, his father said. Getting By Today his family is left with a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars, one with a “V” for valor attached to the ribbon for brave conduct under fire. The Purple Heart is given to soldiers who are seriously wounded or killed in action. His magazine subscriptions still come to his family’s house. Crystal Faulstich says she has no regrets about her husband joining the Army. “I look at look at this way: If he didn’t join, he would probably be down here and hanging with the wrong people,” she said. She wants to look to the future, but is finding it tough. She has applied for admission to St. Mary’s College in St. Mary’s City, Md., and is also looking for jobs at the college, she said. But she said it is way too early to begin dating again. She keeps constant reminders of her husband in her apartment. “There’s pictures everywhere. Like on every wall,” she said. Copyright © 2005 University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism
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