Married to the military: BP vets share story

Rob White was just a young soldier when he answered a call as old as time:
Prepare for battle.
The Fayetteville, N.C., native hadn’t been in the U.S. Army a year when President George H.W. Bush decided to depose the infamous general and dictator Manuel Noriega, de facto leader of Panama.
White was part of Operation Just Cause, the December 1989 invasion to counter Noriega’s declaration of war on the U.S. and protect American citizens – as well as the trade-vital Panama Canal. Combatting human rights violations and drug trafficking also played a role in the invasion.
White was a 20-year-old infantry medic.
“I wanted to be by the boys doing the hard work and make sure they were OK,” he said.
White spent the next nine years at bases in California, Texas, Italy and at Fort Stewart, Ga., where the next phase of his life began.
In November of 1998, that’s where he met a soldier named Margo Meyerhofer, who had graduated from Blooming Prairie High School just months before.
She was at the beginning of her military career; White was preparing for the end of his.
They had something else in common, too: “I wanted to be a combat medic because that was the closest to the front line that a female could be at that time,” said Margo White.
The couple married in July 1999, and Rob spent the next 10 years as an X-ray technician, following her to different bases – and waiting for her to return from a 15-month deployment to Iraq.
“He was at a transition in his life,” Margo White said. “He understood the military. He understood what would be expected of me.”
But in 1999, the Army needed nurses, not combat medics, so White got her nursing degree at North Carolina Agriculture and Technology State University, using the Army’s Green to Gold program, earning her commission as an officer.
She had been a mother/baby nurse for about six months when the U.S. was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.
“I went from that to an intermediate care ward in a theater internment facility,” White said.
She volunteered for a 12-month deployment with the 31st Combat Support Hospital to Camp Bucca in southeast Iraq. Once there, she learned it would be a 15-month stint.
“My attitude was pretty positive, but it was exhausting,” White said of the 12-hour shifts, handled by just a half-dozen nurses. “We were taking care of the bad guys, who were trying to kill us, but I volunteered, so….”
The facility’s primary mission was to care for Iraqi detainees, in addition to any American troops injured in the area.
White said she also treated Iraqi civilians who arrived at the camp,  often with traumatic injuries.
After caring for a young woman who had suffered burns over much of her body, White said the woman’s mother requested White be the person to escort the body out of the hospital to be returned to the family for burial.
“These are supposed to be our enemies,” she said, tears coming to her eyes, “but she was just a mother.”
Still, White said, “We were spoiled. We got care packages. We got to call home pretty regularly….”
Her husband stopped her.
“You weren’t spoiled, Honey. You weren’t,” Rob White said.
“Did I still have to carry a full load of combat gear? Yeah,” Margo White said, “but I felt spoiled.”
She spent most of 2007-08 at Camp Bucca, returning to Fort Bragg, N.C., then moving to Fort Carson, Colo., for three years, working with the Warrior Transition Unit, caring for wounded veterans who will eventually return to civilian life or back to an Army unit.
She was in the Army Reserves until 2015.
Rob left his home state behind when the family moved to Blooming Prairie in 2017. Their daughter Emmaleigh is 12 and son Ian is 11. Rob’s son, Zach, who spent six years in the Air Force, is 28 and living in Washington.
“We’re definitely not scared of change,” Rob White said.
The military life taught them many life lessons, they said.
“Our decision to be gone, our choices to go where we went, make us less narrow-minded,” Margo White said. “Having the experiences that Rob and I have, we’re able to read people pretty well. The military gives you a hands-on education that you can’t get by reading a book.”
Rob calls it a “real world fraternity,” using the support system of talking with other veterans, including those in Blooming Prairie and Steele County.
Margo White participates in the honor guard at football games and, when possible, at funerals.
“My biggest take is this,” Rob White said. “I’ve been to a lot of different places, and I’ve seen what freedom is not. We have freedom.”