At McGuire base, memorial to father's love

McGUIRE AIR FORCE BASE - The family lounge in the passenger terminal, decorated in Sesame Street chic, was bright, beckoning, and filled with happy children.

But Chrissi Keefer wasn't focused on any gaiety as she approached its door last week. She was thinking about the plaque, complete with an engraved portrait, that hung inside the lounge in memory of her husband, Air Force Staff Sgt. Jason Keefer.

"I kind of hesitated at the door. I was just remembering how emotional the day was when the room was dedicated to him," said Chrissi Keefer, 33, who until Friday hadn't entered the lounge since that memorial ceremony six months ago that even Elmo attended. The Keefers had been featured in a Sesame Street TV special on military deployment.

Jason Keefer, a member of the 2d Air Refueling Squadron at McGuire, died a year ago Saturday at age 32, leaving behind Chrissi, 11-year-old Sara, and 7-year-old Jaxon. Though he flew in support of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the flight engineer was not stricken by a battle injury. Complications from cancer took his life.

Deployments touch military families in all sorts of ways: dealing with fears for a loved one's safety, feeling pride in national service, adjusting when a parent returns home injured.

And then, there are challenges that have nothing to do with battle zones.

During their hard times, Chrissi Keefer and her children found an extended family with the squadron - and the Muppets. Chrissi today is thankful for their support during and after Jason's illness.

"They're an amazing group of people," she said. "I couldn't have made it through without them."

Said Lt. Col. Erik Simonsen, 39, who directs operations for the squadron: "The military is really a family. The squad here, the 2d, is really a family."

"Jason was very strong, and I've told people a million times he made me as strong as I am," said Chrissi Keefer, originally from Sewell, N.J.

She must be really strong.

Jason helped fly a 240,000-pound refueling and cargo plane known as the KC-10 Extender. From 2004 until he died, he flew out of McGuire, where his family still lives. He was a flight engineer (a mechanic-pilot) who worked on crews with a pilot, copilot, and boom operator.

Jason Keefer's last two-month deployment was in 2007 to the United Arab Emirates, but he regularly had missions that kept him from home for days or weeks at a time. Crews are in the air two-thirds of the year, Senior Master Sgt. Mike Nerad estimated.

The wives of squad members helped Chrissi around the house when Jason was away, just as she did for them when their husbands were gone. That was a big favor: Son Jaxon is paralyzed from the hips down because of spina bifida, a neural tube birth defect.

Though Jason loved his wife of 12 years and their daughter dearly, he doted most on his son. "He said Jaxon was so tough. He said, if he ever had to go through something medically, he'd be a mess," Chrissi recalled.

Jason Keefer, a West Virginia native, helped other kids as well by volunteering on the base. So in 2006, the Keefers were happy - Chrissi says "honored" - to work with Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, on its "Talk, Listen, Connect" project for military families. The Keefers were among those featured in a 30-minute TV special, For Families: When Parents Are Deployed. (The show is online at www.sesamestreetfamilyconnections.org/grownups/deployments.)

The Keefers were filmed at the Animal Kingdom Zoo in Bordentown, N.J. With giraffes behind them, Jason described his children's reactions when he went on duty - or when they thought he was leaving: "Just today, coming here, when I was putting the flight suit on, Jaxon kept asking me, 'Where are you going, Daddy?' "

Sesame Workshop's Lynn Chwatsky, who leads the military families project, said, "They were an amazing family . . . a good model for other families coping with deployment."

The year after the filming, Jason felt ill. In late 2007, tests found myelodysplastic syndrome in his bone marrow.

When Jason needed a bone-marrow transplant, the whole squadron got tested and a bone marrow drive was held on the base. Master Sgt. Michele Noggle, who is on duty outside the country, and Nerad were especially helpful, pitching in with Chrissi's relatives in New Jersey to watch the children or drive her husband to doctors in Philadelphia.

Nerad, 41, remembers the conversations about family, work, and hobbies that he and Jason had on those drives. Over the miles, Nerad and Jason became close friends.

In November 2008, after it seemed he had beaten the cancer, Jason came down with shingles and his health began deteriorating, Chrissi said. His cancer returned. A steady stream of squadron mates, still dressed in their flight suits, visited him at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

"These guys were there all the time," Chrissi said. "I could go home and sleep five hours and come back, and these guys would always be there. The doctors called them 'the sea of green.' That made me feel so good.

"When I did take Jason off life support, they [Nerad and Noggle] were with me with my father, stepmother and best friend . . . thank you doesn't seem enough to Mike and Michele," Chrissi said, her voice cracking.

Some of those extended family members are furry.

"Every family that is part of our videos is now part of the Sesame family," Sesame Workshop's Chwatsky said. "The second we found out Jason was dead, we reached out to Chrissi. Elmo taped a personal message to the Keefers saying he loved them and was thinking of them."

The video message wowed Chrissi and the kids.

"It made me cry - Elmo was holding a picture of Jason. The kids were just thrilled. They thought Elmo had remembered them," Chrissi said.

Sesame wanted to give a gift to McGuire in memory of Keefer. Sesame officials had visited many installations and decided that rooms where children stayed and played could use some snazzing up, Sesame-style.

The family lounge at the McGuire passenger terminal became the first of 35 rooms on installations around the country to be "Sesame-ized," as Chwatsky puts it.

Last June, volunteers, including the Keefers, painted the drab walls in Elmo red, Big Bird yellow, and Cookie Monster blue, put up character decals, moved in furniture. They stocked shelves and bins with toys, books, and "Talk, Listen, Connect" video packages.

As Chrissi sat in the lounge last week, she said Jason would be pleased that the room is a playful distraction for kids, some of whose parents might be in the waiting room next door saying goodbye. He would be pleased that his family still lived on the base and that Chrissi still worked at its flower shop.

Most of all, Jason might like that his wife, daughter and son still very much feel they are a military family.