December 17th, 2004 5:45 pm
For each fallen soldier, a flag stands

By Mary McCarty / Dayton Daily News

Calling upon a ritual from her Catholic girlhood, Joan McGuinness Wagner says a prayer before she plants each flag into the ground: "Eternal rest grant unto them, Oh Lord, and let the perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace, amen."

As of Thursday afternoon, she had recited the prayer 1,299 times -- once for every soldier who has died in Iraq.Nearly every night, she and her husband, Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge A.J. Wagner, plant new flags in the front yard of their home in Dayton's Rubicon Mills neighborhood. The death toll is updated on a small numbers board.

"It pays respect to those who have died, yet also tells you the cost of war," Wagner said.

The couple was inspired by the remarks of Eldonna Wagonrod of Ohio City in my Sept. 10 column marking the milestone of 1,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq. Wagonrod is the mother of Christian Gurtner, 19, the first Ohio soldier confirmed dead in Iraq. When Wagonrod learned of the 1,000th death, her first impulse was "to get a thousand flags and stick them in our yard."

The Wagners immediately were struck by that idea. "It's too easy for the casualties to become just a number," McGuinness Wagner explained. "It loses a human face."

Not wanting to politicize the deaths of U.S. soldiers, they decided to wait until after the presidential election. They first put up their flags Nov. 13; since then, only one day has gone by without at least one new flag.

"It was surprisingly hard to find sources for the daily death toll," Wagner said. They found no daily updates in newspapers or the evening news. Finally they discovered a Web site, icasualties.org, which they check every evening before performing their sad task.

" The longer the war drags out, the more desensitized we become to the fact that we're occupying this country and that our soldiers are dying every day," said McGuinness Wagner, who is director of Marianist strategies for the University of Dayton. "Our hope is to remind people that the cost of war is human lives."

It has made the war more palpable for them as well. Wagner ordered 1,440 flags from an online company; he may need to reorder soon. "I had to put up 10 flags the other night," he said. "When you check the numbers, it forces you to realize, 'Ten people died yesterday.' It fills up your heart and you don't know where else to go with it."

When McGuinness Wagner looks out at her lawn from her bedroom window, she sees nothing but a sea of flags. "As I get into my car every day, it's calling to me," she said. "It's reminding me I need to be doing what I can to remember these lives and their parents, their husbands and wives, their brothers and sisters."

She wonders how she would feel if she had a child in Iraq.

"Each of these flags represents somebody's child," she said. "As a nation, we are diminished by their loss."