Waterbury - In the inevitable separation between parent and child, at some point some parent assures their child, "You will always be with me." Lori Stroud has made that assurance literal.

For the past seven months, the Waterbury mother of three has carried a 20-inch cardboard-backed picture of her 28-year-old daughter, Jessica Stroud, everywhere she goes. In the laundry. To the gym. At the doctor's. In the car. Jessica is in the bag, on her mom's back. Like Linus with his blanket.

Lest one assume Lori Stroud is practicing a form of Extreme Parenting, her daughter Jessica, is a sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserve, who is now serving as a mechanic at Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq.

Since Jessica, a graduate of Waterbury's Kennedy High School and Norwich University in Vermont, left to join her unit in February, Lori has carted the photo of her 5-foot-2-inch daughter in Army fatigues with her. In July, Lori Stroud parted with the image for two weeks - long enough for friend Margaret Vagnini and her family to "take Jess with" them on their trip across the United States. They snapped pictures of Jessica in uniform at every major landmark - and many breakfast nooks - they visited. Now, in addition to the patriotic paraphernalia that swaths the Stroud's tidy Robinwood-area home, Lori Stroud has pictures of her daughter at the Grand Canyon, in the Petrified Forest, on the Continental Divide and in the Painted Desert.

"Jess has been everywhere," Vagnini said.

Stroud, of the 334th Quartermaster Battalion, joined the Army Reserve in 2005, just 10 days after receiving a degree in architecture. Her mother, a physical education teacher at Wilby High School, was stunned. "I assumed she'd join a firm and be an architect."

Now, Jessica Stroud, whose bulletproof vest weighs half of what she does, is planning to make the military a career, her mother says.

"Jess is a very strong-willed person," Lori said. "She is a very patriotic person. She has great respect for the country and I think (that) compelled (her) to join the reserves to support the country."

Lori believes the death of U.S. Army Pfc. Anthony D'Agostino, a Waterbury resident and friend of her daughter's, played a critical role in Jess's decision to enlist. D'Agostino was killed Nov. 2, 2003, when the helicopter in which he was riding was shot down by enemy fire. He was 20 and had joined the Army immediately after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The daughter of a U.S. Army corporal, Lori Stroud said she has always been patriotic and initially supported the invasion of Iraq, believing that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction. By September 2004, when the Iraq Survey Group released its 1,000-page report that found that Iraq did not possess chemical and biological weapons, Lori Stroud had changed her mind.

"I had to come to terms and resolve that I still love this country," she said. "That hasn't changed. There's a job that has to be finished there and that is to bring these men and women home."

Stroud leafs through a bulging photo album of her daughter at various stages of her Army training. Balancing between terror and pride, she says she has kept a vigilant track of the progress of the war. By last year, when her daughter's orders came, she said she felt like she was "reliving the Vietnam War."

"I was wondering why we were still there? How it came to that we were lied to and were still sending our young people to get killed and maimed."

As she wrestled between those feelings and worries about her daughter, she said, "the only way I could find to support her was to get out my Fourth of July decorations and corner every place on the East Coast that was still selling them."

Her home became swathed in American flags, yellow ribbons, wreaths, bumper stickers, T-shirts, rag dolls and red, white and blue bird houses.

"I think the best thing about 'mini Jess' is that although I know this is only a facsimile of my daughter, it gives me great comfort to have her with me," Lori said. "Often people will ask me who that is, and it gives me the opportunity to talk about Jess, how proud I am of her, and share her story. The sharing is comforting to me."

Lori said she had been impressed by the transformation of her daughter, always athletic, after her boot camp experience in Fort Jackson, S.C.

"She was toughened up at that point," she said. "Mentally, she was very strong and physically, she was toned, very toned. I knew she could handle it. She's a strong kid. She's a strong, strong kid."

Jessica Stroud is expected home by Christmas.

--

Information from: Republican-American of Waterbury, http://www.rep-am.com/