Longtime Army family is new to having a parent in a war zone

Published: 2006-10-23

BEL AIR, Md. (CNS) -- Their dad's been in the Army all their lives, but at 16 and 17, Morgan and Kristian Hilber are finding out for the first time what it's like to have him assigned to a war zone. The two students at C. Milton Wright High School in northeastern Maryland have had to make that adjustment this year after their father, Lt. Col. David Hilber, shipped out for Iraq in the spring. An optometrist, Hilber will spend about a year treating the eye problems of prisoners at a U.S.-run detention center near the Baghdad, Iraq, airport, explained his wife, Natalie Hilber. During a visit at the Catholic family's home near the Aberdeen Proving Ground in early October, Natalie, Kristian and Morgan Hilber described the changes -- particularly the new responsibilities -- that they've taken on as their husband and father is deployed for the first time in his 17-year Army career.

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