PROGRAM SERVES SURVIVORS

FORT DRUM — Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Michael "Sonny" Mitchell served with 1st Lt. Adam M. Malson and Master Sgt. Tulsa T. Tuliau in Iraq. He also was there when both soldiers were killed in combat in 2005.

Now, instead of commanding soldiers, Mr. Mitchell is reaching out to the surviving spouses of 10th Mountain Division soldiers — and he started with Lindsey A. Larkin and Katharine J. Tuliau, the wives of Lt. Malson and Sgt. Tuliau.

"We determined that we could do better to take care of the surviving families' needs," said Mr. Mitchell, director of the Soldier and Family Assistance Center, which oversees the Survivor Outreach Services. "We thought it was important to provide a new door, with new faces to help them deal with survivor benefits issues that many don't have right away. We found that at a year out is where many are running into problems."

Survivor Outreach Services opened officially in May. But it was a project that Maj. Gen. Michael L. Oates, the commander of Fort Drum and the 10th Mountain Division, and Mr. Mitchell began working on in March 2008. The program has hired two employees to work exclusively with survivors and plan monthly outreach events.

And the outreach has paid off. The service has identified 316 surviving families from the 10th Mountain Division and has a local network of 25 survivors. And it started with Mrs. Larkin and Mrs. Tuliau.

"I wish I had had another widow to call and see what they did with the insurance benefits, or how they handled something," Mrs. Tuliau said. "There is so much thrown at you all at once and you're making huge decisions on your own, and for me that was the first time I had done that in a long time."

Mrs. Tuliau, who was a combat medic in the Army for 10 years, met Sgt. Tuliau while deployed to Bosnia. He was an artilleryman with the 3rd Battalion, 314th Field Artillery Regiment of the 2nd Brigade, 78th Division assigned to Fort Drum when he was killed. He died in an improvised explosive device attack on Sept. 26, 2005, in Rustimayah, Iraq.

Mrs. Tuliau is now a laboratory technician and works at Guthrie Medical Clinic on Fort Drum. After her husband's death, she said, she came back to her job too soon. She wished there had been an office where she could have turned for support and advice in 2005.

"I would never come to post for anything but work and I had no connection whatsoever," she said. "Now this service is picking up where the family readiness group left off."

Keeping that connection and maintaining that Army family is exactly what Mr. Mitchell and his staff want to achieve. Mr. Mitchell said the program offers a place where a survivor can come and ask questions, instead of having to retell the story at every office around post.

"Before the program, some of us knew each other and we would get together randomly and rarely," Mrs. Larkin said. "Now we have a monthly get-together that we do on our own. It's good because I know that the other spouses have been there and know what I've been through or will go through. We can relate."

Mrs. Larkin, who remarried last year and gave birth to her first daughter, Stella, 18 days ago, met Lt. Malson while attending Michigan State University. They were in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps together and she became a military police officer with the 2nd Brigade and he an infantry officer with the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment. He died Feb. 19, 2005, when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive along a road in Baghdad.

After her husband died, Mrs. Larkin stayed in the Army until 2008. She said she felt connected to and received support from her unit, but her husband's unit seemed so far away. She called the experience "isolating" and was happy when she was able to meet other spouses who had gone through losing a husband at war.

"It's great for a spouse who recently lost her husband to see what it's like three years down the road," said Sarah W. Gebo, the social worker who organizes outreach for the program. "It's nice for them to see someone like Lindsey and Kate to know where they can be with time."

There are 11 other service offices around the country based at other Army installations. The Fort Drum program is responsible for seven states, which can make it hard to connect with a surviving family member who lives in Maine or Massachusetts.

There is a system in place where one office will hand off a survivor to another when the survivor relocates, but finding every survivor can be difficult, said Robert J. Boram, the program's financial director. But a Web site is under construction and a Facebook group is already established to help survivors connect.

"Our main focus is today, forward and letting survivors know that they have a whole life to live," he said."