Coming to Brevard County FL this week

Brevard Community College and Florida Tech
7 p.m. Wednesday, Simpkins Fine Arts Auditorium, Building 4, Brevard Community College in Cocoa, 1519 Clearlake Road;


7 p.m. Thursday, Florida Tech's Gleason Auditorium, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne

Admission: Free; no reservations necessary
Information: 242-3613 or visit floridatoday.com/events


June 14, 2009


To Iraq and back: Norris Burkes speaks about overseas work

BY CHRIS KRIDLER
FLORIDA TODAY

NORRIS BURKES FOUND his first wartime deployment as a chaplain full of "boredom interrupted by sheer terror."

The FLORIDA TODAY "Spirituality" columnist, who will talk about his experiences in Iraq at two free talks in Cocoa and Melbourne this week, said he was fortunate in that the terror was intermittent.

"We rejoiced at the routine nature of the job as well as sort of complained about it some days," he said in a telephone interview from his home in California. He and the medical personnel he was with knew that quiet times meant good news -- the troops they served were healthy.

Burkes described many of the most intense moments and encounters with wounded soldiers in his column, which appears in more than 30 newspapers and runs Saturdays in FLORIDA TODAY.

Burkes, who served as a chaplain at Patrick Air Force Base from 1999 to 2002, is attached to the 162nd Combat Communications Group in California. He also has worked as a hospital chaplain dealing with all faiths.

He was deployed with the 332nd
Air Expeditionary Wing, he went as a Protestant.

"I'm certainly a counselor to all people, but the worship and the liturgy and so forth I provide to them is Protestant-based," he said. Still, his support went beyond liturgy.

"When it's a patient, you're providing for whatever they need," Burkes said. "It's about them. It's not about you. So I delivered Korans and made sure that the Muslim patients are shown respect for their faith."

He's been asked whether performing his duty as a military chaplain means he condones war. "I worry about my part of it," he said -- providing troops with the opportunity to worship wherever they are.He sees his role as providing troops with the opportunity to worship, wherever they are.

Burkes expected more questioning of faith in the high-stress environment of war, but he saw the opposite.

"I actually found more people to affirm their faith and more people to return to their faith and actually less questioning of faith than I really anticipated," he said. "It goes back to that saying, 'There are no atheists in foxholes.' You know what? There's a lot of truth in that."

Burkes already had seen the effects of war at home, as the bearer of bad tidings to families who had lost a son or daughter.

"It probably is a little more difficult here when I actually face the loved ones at their front door, but I had never been around that level of trauma -- that level of fresh trauma," he said.

Duty in Iraq was not like working in a hospital, where the patient greets you cleaned and bandaged.

"When you watch them come out with tattered clothing and bloody clothing and stumps, really, sometimes, that was hard," he said."Again, fortunately, that wasn't every day, you know. We saw that about half a dozen times."

His most stressful experience came during his trip home last month. His plane made an emergency landing in Baltimore. It blew a tire and bounced a few times. Lights and speakers fell from the roof. Several were injured.

"For the next 10 minutes, all of us were praying and crying and wondering whether or not if it was all going to be for dying here," Burkes said.

That experience, of course, also became a column, in which he asked himself: "What legacy will you leave from this life? Will it be one of faith? Will it be one of compassion? What will it be like to die? Will this be a connecting flight to a celestial place? Will God meet me at the gate?"

Burkes was in Iraq for about four months. His wife, Becky, a schoolteacher frequently mentioned in his columns, tried to keep her routine at home. They have a son and three daughters; the youngest daughter just turned 18.

A self-confessed techno-junkie who loves his iPhone, Burkes has a bachelor's degree from Baylor University and a master's in divinity from Golden Gate Seminary.

He started writing his column for FLORIDA TODAY in 2001 while stationed at Patrick Air Force Base, and he's also the author of "No Small Miracles: Heartwarming, Humorous, and Hopefilled Stories from a Pediatric Chaplain," a compilation of columns.

Usually, Burkes writes about spirituality in everyday life, and many readers look for those often-humorous explorations of religion.

His talks in Brevard County, which are co-sponsored by FLORIDA TODAY, Florida Tech and Brevard Community College, will include not just the wartime experiences, but those everyday insights, he said.

"I think people enjoy the sense of humor mixed in with the tears," Burkes said. "If I had a writing formula or a speaking formula, it's: I make you laugh, I make you cry, I make you smile, and then I say, 'Amen.' "

His wife tells him to toughen up when he gets the occasional critical letter, but most of the reaction he gets is positive.

That's the message he shares, too.

"I like to start with laughter, then I like to tell a poignant story, and I like to just bring a smile to people's face -- like, you know what? It's going to be all right."

Additional Facts
Meet Burkes
What: Talks by FLORIDA TODAY "Spirituality" columnist Norris Burkes, co-sponsored by FLORIDA TODAY, Brevard Community College and Florida Tech
When and where: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Simpkins Fine Arts Auditorium, Building 4, Brevard Community College in Cocoa, 1519 Clearlake Road; and 7 p.m. Thursday, Florida Tech's Gleason Auditorium, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne
Admission: Free; no reservations necessary
Information: 242-3613 or visit floridatoday.com/events
More about Burkes: thechaplain.net

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------