ELKIN - Lloyd Payne Jr. grips a large mug of coffee as he runs through a list of projects and dates. As town manager, he is working to establish rates for a new sewer authority. There's the possibility of raising salaries, and a notice from the state that a bridge closed for three years is coming down. But he won't be here to see any of those things through.
Instead, he will be more than 185 miles away in Dunn preparing to deploy to Iraq with the National Guard's 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team out of Clinton. He is a first sergeant in a maintenance company.
"It's a sacrifice, to say the least, to family and others. But I do it, and it's a labor of love. It's not something I dread. I do it because I love this country, who it is, what it is," Payne said. "We have wonderful freedom. A lot of times I would fight to the death to defend those rights for all of us."
Payne will begin active duty this month and will be involved in various command activities with the team's intensive training. The unit could go to Iraq sometime after the first of the year. He could be gone for as long as 18 months.
He will be leaving the small town where he is a leader, a husband and a father in order to give back to his country.
For Payne, 32, it's an exciting, almost exhilarating, time.
He's been in the Guard since he was a senior in high school. He works as a solider one weekend a month and often late into the night after his 18-month-old daughter has gone to bed. His ability to juggle it all -- arriving at town hall as early as 6:30 a.m. and attending meetings as late as 10 p.m. -- caused one former mayor to give him the nickname "Wide Open" for his tendency to go nonstop, full-speed ahead.
Payne has spent the last few months putting department heads in charge of several projects. He has handed off the majority of his duties to John Holcomb, the finance director and now assistant town manager.
And though he will still be coming home on weekends until he deploys, he and his wife, Beth, a counselor at Jonesville Elementary School, are preparing their daughter, Ella, by making a book of pictures so she can look at Daddy each day that he is away. The couple are also preparing themselves for the long separation that will throw each into very different roles.
"She's the one who's got to continue to do all the normal day-to-day stuff here, tackle all the finances, keep the house, being concerned about me," Payne said. "I'm over there doing totally different things, so much more focused than what she's got to do. She's got to be the jack of all trades.
"She's the hero."
Role of the Guard
The N.C. National Guard has played a critical role in the war. Since 2001, it has deployed more than 12,000 soldiers, said Maj. Matt Handley, a Guard spokesman. There are 656 soldiers from the N.C. Guard who are deployed now.
Next year is expected to be the Guard's busiest year since 2004, when about 6,500 soldiers were deployed.
Right now, about 5,000 soldiers are on alert for deployment next year, Handley said. Aviation and a host of other small companies will go. But the 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team will be the largest, with about 4,200 soldiers.
"One of the things the public doesn't see…. We're here. Normally, when they drive by, they don't see the soldiers training," said Sgt. 1st Class David Lanning, an active-duty Guardsmen being transferred to the 1-113th Field Artillery in Charlotte. "We don't get deployed as often, but a lot of the deployment that they serve is longer deployment on average."
Active-duty soldiers have more support channels for their spouses, their extended families, and through their communities, he said. With the Guard, you really don't see that until it's mobilization time.
One of the big stresses is leaving the role of Mom or Dad to someone else.
Capt. Shyla Wesson left this summer for three weeks of training with the 1450th Transportation Company. When she returned, her 2-year-old son wouldn't come to her, she said. Wesson, a Caldwell County social worker, is married to a deputy who is also in the National Guard and could be deployed.
When she first deployed to Iraq in 2003, she was 29 and single. She had seven days' notice.
She's now 34, and in addition to her son, she has a 3-year-old daughter. She is ready to go back to Iraq if needed, but she worries more this time.
"The point I get to ponder most days is, ‘Who needs me more, the Army or my babies?'" Wesson said. "The Army can find a thousand other captains, but there's only one Mommy."
A way to give back
Payne joined the military in 1993, when he was 17. He didn't have a family military background, but he loved the flag and the uniform. Mostly, the principles that the Army emphasized were similar to those that his mother and his Baptist-minister father stressed -- to always work hard, love God and love your family, he said.
The summer between his junior and senior years, he spent nine weeks at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., completing basic training. He graduated from high school in 1994 and was assigned to the National Guard unit in Lenoir. By that time, he was enrolled at Appalachian State University.
"I still think it was one of the best decisions I made in my life," Payne said. "I do not regret a day of it. Seeing the uniform, seeing the flag, the patriotism kind of flows through me.… I'm very passionate about the military and, again, I don't regret it today."
At that time, he had no real indication that he could or would be called to war, he said.
He left ASU in 2001 after receiving a master's degree in public administration.
That same year, he landed his first job as a town manager at Lake Waccamaw. He had been there about three years when the Guard called him. He deployed to Iraq and Kuwait from January 2004 until March 2005.
He became town manager of Elkin in August 2005.
In 2007, Payne and his wife had Ella, now a precocious toddler who goes from hugs to dancing to chasing after the family dog.
There's going to be more to think about this time when he goes to Iraq, Beth Payne said.
They are making sure that Ella doesn't forget him and that somehow each day her father is there with her. In addition to looking at photos, the couple are planning to show Ella videos of him reading stories to her.
Beth Payne has thought about the possibility that her husband could be injured or killed, but she doesn't dwell on it. "You do think about it … but you just prepare for him to come home," she said. "Whatever is God's plan for our lives is his plan."
First Sergeant
To the soldiers with his transportation company, Payne is known simply as First Sergeant.
On a recent weekend, Payne traveled to the National Guard Armory in Concord on a Friday, hours before the other men and women arrived, then trained with them from late that afternoon into the morning hours. Some didn't get to bed until about 2:30. Payne lay down on a cot in his office at about 3 o'clock. He was back at his desk a couple of hours later.
Roll call was at 9 a.m., and they faced a full day of training exercises and classes. Some soldiers went out to get breakfast, but Payne had only the coffee he made in his office. "I know you're tired and didn't get a lot of sleep last night," Payne said to the soldiers. "You'll make it through it."
After formation, some soldiers turned in weapons. Others headed to a class. Payne went back to his office to handle a stack of paperwork, then made a quick call to Beth and Ella.
"Ella, what are you doing? Are you eating breakfast? Daddy hasn't even had breakfast," he said. "Well, I love you. I'll see you tomorrow sometime."
Because his transportation company is being absorbed into the 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, it's the last weekend for a while that the soldiers may be together.
Some of them have 10 or more years with the company. They have varying backgrounds -- schoolteachers, factory workers, truck drivers. Most going with the 30th will be broken up into different companies. Their role will be combat support, such as transportation, fuel handlers, maintenance, medical.
The training can be exhausting. Part of the weekend involved going through procedures for making an emergency call: how to identify where you are, who you are, how to get to you and the kind of help you need.
On Sunday, the training ended, but Payne stayed on for a few more hours. Most of the soldiers had gone home.
As he drove back to Elkin, he tried to switch gears. In that 90-minute drive, he said, he thought about everything that went on.
"You show up one weekend a month, but that's not all the work you do," he said. "I try to leave it here if I've had a rough weekend."
Switching gears
Payne takes his daughter to day care every morning, sometimes as early as 6:30, then goes straight to his desk at town hall.
No one else is there until 8 and the building doesn't open to the public until an hour later, giving him time to read mail, respond to e-mails and prepare for meetings.
He holds a meeting with his department heads. Then he outlines a list of meetings he has scheduled, including one that requires driving to Dobson to meet with economic-development leaders. Another meeting with the county board of commissioners doesn't begin until 9 p.m. and could last until 10. He has begun to notice how his military training helps him to do his civilian job.
The Army has taught him to act, to respond, he said. "I get really bored if I have things and have six months to do it," Payne said. "I'm too task-oriented. I want to get it done, get that to whoever I'm responsible to, and get on to the next thing."
But he's not all business all of the time. Part of his morning is spent with the town's parks and recreation director going over teams for a golf tournament.
Payne has an ability to build relationships, said Holcomb, the town's finance director and now assistant town manager.
It's going to be a challenge to fill in for him while he's away, Holcomb said. "We'll do as best we can," he said.
Town officials knew when they hired Payne that he could be deployed at some point. He won't be paid his salary of $72,000 a year while he is gone, but officials say that his job will be waiting for him when he returns.
Until about a year ago, not many residents of this small town knew that he was in the military. A group began staging weekly war protests next to the building where Payne works.
They carry American flags and signs that read "Wage Peace." The group includes a doctor, an artist, some downtown business owners and others.
They change the number on a dry-erase board. Last week, it was 4,191 the total U.S. military dead since the Iraq war began more than five years ago. That includes 563 in the National Guard.
"We appreciate him going. Actually, the centerpiece of our very large banner is ‘pro soldier, pro peace,'" said Dr. Paul Gulley, an Elkin doctor who shows up each week to protest. "We clearly respect the decision of people who volunteer and go overseas. It's so important. We think the government made a very ill-advised decision to go into Iraq."
The mission
Payne doesn't agree with the protesters, he said, but he supports their right to express their opinion.
He has seen 17-, 18-, and 19-year-olds fresh out of high school with limited life experience join the military, be trained, and sent into harm's way. It is staggering to know what the United States is asking them to do for their country, he said.
Coming back after going to a place such as Iraq, soldiers need support, Payne said. There are so many things that soldiersexperience physically and psychologically.
"They don't know and understand what these 18-year-old and 19-year-old men and women are doing to leave home … to go kick down doors and kill terrorists," he said.
For his part, he tries to stay focused on the mission.
He is filled with pride, honor, duty and commitment to his country as he prepares to go to Iraq, he said.
He has thought about all the things that could happen to him, but he doesn't dwell on them.
He looks forward to his deployment and hopes that others support him.
"It's so important, so vital…. You've been out on the road, on a mission. Mail call comes around. You've got a letter from someone back home," Payne said. "It brings it full circle, when you get a letter from home, to complete your job and your mission and get back home to them."
■ Sherry Youngquist can be reached in Mount Airy at 336-918-6119 or at syoungquist@wsjournal.com.
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