By Jeannie O’Sullivan
Times Staff Writer
The Marine Corps was a likely calling for Cpl. Jackie Martin, a girl who marked the stages of her life with physical challenges.
She rode a bike through her childhood, swung through her preteen softball years and kicked around adolescence — and a soccer ball — in high school.
"If she got mad at me, she would do push-ups," said Alice Martin, a billing specialist at Holy Redeemer’s Home Health & Hospice Services in Parkwood.
When Jackie joined Bensalem High School’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program and started learning about different military branches, her choice didn’t surprise anyone.
On Sept. 18, 2003, Alice Martin wept as her daughter, then 18, left for Marine boot camp on Parris Island, S.C. To Martin’s coworkers, her angst was as visible as the huge framed photograph of Jackie on her desk.
"It’s a very difficult thing," said account representative Jennifer Carey, a close friend to both Alice and Jackie Martin.
Alice wept again recently, upon finding out that Jackie would be leaving for Iraq during the middle of this month.
Jackie already had done a six-month stint in the Middle East, earlier in 2005. Alice remembers an adjustment period that was even more dramatic than her daughter leaving for boot camp, or for the Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego, where she is stationed.
Members of the Martin family — Jackie has two older brothers, a younger sister, Vicki, 13, and dad Joe, who is separated from Martin — were accustomed to speaking with Jackie several times a week. From Iraq, though, phone calls were few and far between.
"We would walk at lunchtime and she would be spazzing out," Carey said of her friend Alice.
Carey likes to circulate e-mail updates about Jackie and has decorated a bin to collect care-package items each month.
That first time Jackie went to Iraq, about a year ago, a distressed Alice stayed home for two days. Upon her return to work, she found the office festooned with yellow ribbons, a huge bouquet of yellow sitting on her desk.
Like mother, like daughter was the phrase that went through coworkers’ heads after Martin learned about Jackie’s most recent deployment. In much the same way that Jackie always blew off steam with activity, Alice found stress relief in her work — lots of it, according to Denice Vingara, Martin’s supervisor.
Though she is a big fan of productivity in the office, Vingara would have preferred less output and more emotion from her friend.
"It wasn’t her," Vingara said. "We needed something to bring Alice back."
Actually, they knew it wasn’t just something. It was the only thing. So at the office’s recent holiday party, the 80-plus-member staff gave Alice Martin a gift — a plane ticket to San Diego and time with Jackie, paid for with more than $300 that Carey and Vingara collected from a lot of Alice boosters.
And there was more. They threw in an additional $200 for spending money, courtesy of those same good-hearted donors.
Many envelopes travel through office places at this time of year, but people paid special attention to this one, the two women agreed.
They printed Martin’s flight information on holiday stationery. She will leave on Jan. 8 and stay with Jackie for five days.
Of San Diego’s myriad offerings — a rather famous zoo, the U.S. Olympic Training Center, even California’s first mission — there’s just one thing that Alice Martin is eager to see.
Her daughter.
"And we’re just going to hang out," Martin said. ••
Reporter Jeannie O’Sullivan can be reached at 215-354-3038 or osullivanj@phillynews.com