A Family Waits and Wonders

By P.J. Huffstutter

April 7, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

BATAVIA, Ohio — There are yellow ribbons tied around mailboxes and telephone poles and staked across rolling hills. They curl around trees and the handrails of a Clermont County office building. They flutter from the mirrors or antennas of school buses.

The ribbons are as bright as they were two years ago, when townspeople started putting them up after Carolyn Maupin’s son was captured in Iraq. There are so many that as Carolyn drove across town on her way to Cincinnati last Friday, it looked like she was breezing past fields of plastic daffodils.

She arrived at the Yellow Ribbon Support Center and warmly greeted the volunteers. Carolyn walked past walls plastered with photographs of Army Sgt. Keith Matthew “Matt” Maupin, slipped into a back office and sat down by the phone.

When the Army officer called, as he does every Friday at 6 p.m., one of the first things Carolyn asked was this: Are you any closer to finding my son?

The reply was simple, painful and routine: No.

Since the U.S. invaded Iraq three years ago, Matt is the only kidnapped soldier whose fate remains unknown.

On April 9, 2004, while on a security detail protecting a civilian convoy west of Baghdad, Matt’s unit was attacked. As bullets flew, the young man was abducted. Within days, the kidnappers released grainy video of the weary-looking 20-year-old, wearing camouflage and surrounded by five masked men. About three months later, another video was released of a man being shot in the back of the head and falling into a shallow grave. The narrator claimed it was Keith Matthew Maupin.

But the video never showed the soldier’s face. Matt’s body was never recovered. There has been no proof of his death -- not then, and not now, two years later -- so the military considers him to be alive.

“I wake up and think, ‘Is this the day that Matt will call and tell me he’s coming home? Is this the day that the Army will call and tell me he’s dead?’ ” said Carolyn, 58, a transportation secretary and dispatcher at the West Clermont School District. “I go to bed wondering, ‘How did Matt spend his day today? Did he eat? Can he sleep?’ ”

She and Matt’s father, Keith, have pondered these questions for 728 days.

Officially, Matt Maupin is classified as “captured.”

The Army doesn’t consider him a prisoner of war, because Matt was not abducted by an opposing army and there was no standing government in Iraq at the time. Military officials have said they don’t know who belonged to the faction that took Matt, or what his kidnappers wanted.

There is no one to contact to negotiate for his release, no way to ensure that his kidnappers are feeding and sheltering him in a humane way. What the military has is a name -- the Sharp Sword Against the Enemies of God and His Prophet -- and fruitless rumors.

Only one other U.S. soldier in recent history has been classified as captured: Navy Capt. Michael “Scott” Speicher disappeared when his plane was shot down over Iraq in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War. Neither he nor the ejection seat has been found.

When news of Matt’s capture first broke, the country flooded the family with thousands of cards, e-mails and calls of condolences. Camera crews swarmed the streets of Batavia (pop. 1,600) and nearby villages, about 20 miles southeast of downtown Cincinnati. For weeks, reporters peppered residents with questions about the 6-foot-2, 220-pound former high school football player.

As time passed, both the headlines and public attention faded -- leaving Matt’s family and the community isolated in their sorrow.

Army officials -- here this weekend for a charity fundraiser honoring Matt and the 28 men in the region killed in Iraq -- have been awed by the display of solidarity.

“It’s so strange. Sad and strange,” said Shari Lawrence, deputy public affairs officer for the U.S. Army Human Resources Command. “Nothing has changed there in all this time.”

To a degree, not much has changed in the military’s eyes either. The Army has promoted Matt twice. His paycheck is regularly deposited into his bank account, which remains untouched.

His car, a cherry red 1998 Mustang, sits in his father’s garage. (Though Matt grew up and went to school in Batavia, his parents now live just outside of town.)

Last year, uniforms and gear found in Matt’s footlocker in Iraq showed up on Carolyn’s doorstep. A box with other personal belongings, including his reading glasses, sits in a corner of Matt’s bedroom.

“I can’t bear to open it,” Carolyn said. “Matt will do it.”

All of Carolyn Maupin’s phones -- home, office, cell -- forward her calls to wherever she is. She doesn’t want to miss a single new bit of information about her son.

Such vigilance brings calls both strange and strained. Antiwar protesters have asked why the family hasn’t been more critical of the Army. Retired soldiers gossip about reports of Iraqis using torture. One woman even called to say a psychic had a premonition that Matt was alive in a desert.

The calls grow more frequent whenever a kidnap victim is released in Iraq.

“When we heard about that American journalist [Jill Carroll] being let go, all anyone here could talk about was Matt,” said Fred Hessdoerfer, a family friend and volunteer at the Yellow Ribbon Center. “If she can be found, then Matt must be out there somewhere.”

Last week, Carolyn sat at her desk inside the transportation office next to Glen Este High School in Batavia, mapping out the bus drivers’ schedules. A newspaper reporter called to ask if she’d heard about Carroll’s release. Did she have any updates about Matt’s whereabouts?

“No, I don’t,” Carolyn replied. “Do you?”

The phone rang throughout the day. A neighbor. Friends. Co-workers. All asking about Matt.

Cradling the phone to her ear, Carolyn glanced at the silver-framed family portrait on the edge of her desk. It was taken long before Matt left for boot camp. He’s smiling.

Matt’s parents -- who have been divorced for 14 years -- didn’t want their son to join the military, though Keith served in the Marine Corps during Vietnam.

“I told him, ‘Matt, there’s a war going on. You could easily be sent to Iraq, even if you’re in the Reserves. It’s too dangerous,’ ” said Keith, 55, who usually joins Carolyn for the weekly military update. “Matt wanted to earn his own way.”

Matt arrived in Iraq in February 2004. He and most of his unit with the Army Reserves 724th Transportation Company were stationed near Baghdad, crisscrossing the country with convoys carrying supplies, including dry goods, fuel and artillery.

Carolyn had joined an Armed Forces Support Group before Matt left the country. She and other families would share e-mails and watch home movies shot in Iraq: footage of sons and fathers visiting schools, of daughters and mothers tossing toys and candy to kids. On camera, the soldiers reassured their families that they were safe.

Carolyn and Keith treasure their three letters from their son. The pages have been read so often the paper has worn at the folds, so Carolyn had them laminated.

Matt, who boarded his first plane after he enlisted, longed for home. “Hey Mom. I wouldn’t come here on a bet,” he wrote in one letter. “I just want to come back to America.”

“The last time he called was about a week before the attack,” Carolyn said. “He sounded busy. He said, ‘I love you,’ and hung up.”

After the kidnapping, townspeople gathered protectively around the family and took comfort in rituals they could control, like tying yellow ribbons.

In the last two years, officials from the Clermont County Convention and Visitors Bureau estimated that they’ve handed out about 30,000 yards of ribbon. When the sun fades the bright yellow, the ribbons are quickly replaced.

“We have bow patrols, where we check the streets to make sure no bows are down. We refresh, replace or redo them at least three times a year,” said June Creager, executive director of the Visitors Bureau.

At Glen Este High, where Matt graduated in 2001, students and teachers have covered the chain-link fence with posters of his Army photo -- jaw jutting, green eyes gleaming -- and arranged hundreds of red, white and blue cups to spell out messages, including one that reads “LIGHTING THE WAY HOME.”

The marquee in front of Aztec Plumbing pleads, “PRAY FOR MATT.” Snappy Tomato Pizza advertises its weekly lunch buffet specials below bold letters that ask diners to “PRAY FOR MATT MAUPIN AND FAMILY.”

“We’ll take it down when he comes home,” said Becky Russell, daytime manager at the pizza place. “There’s no reason to change it until we know.”

Matt’s younger brother, Micah, 21, was already in the Marine Corps at the time of the kidnapping. He’s a corporal based at Miramar Air Station in San Diego. This winter, he broke his neck in a motorcycle crash.

While recovering, he told his parents that he asked the Marines to send him to Iraq. He wanted to find Matt.

Micah is scheduled to leave for Iraq this summer. He still wants to go. His parents have begged him to change his mind. The military will review the request when he’s healed.

Carolyn and Keith threw their energies into founding the Yellow Ribbon Support Center to aid military families and troops serving overseas.

A landlord offered them a one-story storefront rent-free in Cincinnati. Volunteers, including elementary school children and an 89-year-old woman, assembled metal shelves to hold donated goods that included crates of Girl Scout cookies, bottles of shampoo and bags bulging with chocolate Easter eggs.

The center opened in August 2004 and has sent to Iraq more than 5,000 care packages filled with movies, snacks and small luxuries such as cherry-flavored ChapStick and home-sewn pillowcases.

Ruth Wilson tucked a couple of bottles of lavender shower gel into a cardboard box. Then she reached for a picture of Matt.

Each outgoing package includes an image of his face -- either in a snapshot or on a poster, T-shirt or magnets. As she sorted through the donated goods, Wilson reminisced about how her son and Matt were schoolmates. But she quickly became flustered.

“My son knows, wait, I mean knew, wait, I mean he knows Matt,” Wilson said, glancing around nervously. “I don’t mean to speak of him in the past tense. But it’s hard not to slip.”

Outsiders have accused Carolyn and Keith of encouraging Matt’s morbid celebrity. Neither can shop for groceries without being stared at.

“I was changing some of the ribbons at the [high] school fence last weekend. A woman drove up, rolled down her window and asked, ‘Don’t you think you should let it go?’ ” Carolyn said.

Carolyn, a pixie-haired woman with a gaunt frame, said the comment made her ill.

Keith, whose grief led him to shut down his construction company last summer, relies on friends and his savings to pay the rent. He spends most days at the center, surrounded by posters of his son’s face.

“It’s the only place where I feel at peace,” Keith said, who hasn’t shaved in two years. The bushy gray beard is now 10 inches long.

When President Bush attended the Cincinnati Reds’ opening day Monday, he visited with the couple and reassured them that the military had not given up the search.

Then, Keith recalled, the president suggested he visit a barber.

Keith said he tugged on the beard and replied, “I’ll cut this when you bring Matt home.”