Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 12, 1993                   TAG: 9310120028
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                                LENGTH: Medium

NAVY WIFE LOST MATE - AND MUCH OF HEALTH AID

Forwalder, 27, not only went from wife to widow. She also lost 25 percent of the medical benefits covering her pregnancy. "Nobody told me this was going to be a problem," she said. "I assumed that this was all under my . . . coverage."

But the military health system's promise to pay all costs for the pregnancy ended when Bob Forwalder's plane crashed between Italy and the Balkan Peninsula. His wife had to pay more than $1,000 in unexpected bills.

Congress and the Pentagon may change that situation, in part because of Forwalder's case and the letters it has generated from her doctor, her family and fellow officers in her late husband's unit.

Her obstetrician, Dr. Raymond Lackore, still remembers the pledge he made to Forwalder the last time he saw him. The 25-year-old Forwalder had come in with his wife for her checkup just a few days before deploying. The couple listened to the baby's heartbeat and talked about the delivery.

Forwalder had asked to stay home in Virginia Beach from the six-month cruise until the baby was born, but his squadron needed everyone for air operations over Bosnia.

"I shook his hand in the hallway, and I looked him straight in the eye and told him I would take care of her," Lackore said. "He left, and the next thing I knew, he was dead."

Lackore refused to bill Forwalder for the extra charges incurred when her benefits changed. "I couldn't see chasing her for this money," he said.

But he can't understand why the military didn't keep her 100 percent coverage. "This is his son. This is his creation," the doctor said. "The Navy abruptly cuts off support of his creation. To cut benefits like that immediately after he dies, with a child in process - it's so astonishing."

Forwalder and four other crewmen died March 26 when their plane went down near the carrier Theodore Roosevelt. Their bodies were never found, although divers salvaged pieces of the plane's fuselage and radar dome.

For a while longer, Forwalder continued to get mail from her husband. One letter was written the day he died, telling her how much he was looking forward to flying that night.

Then, on April 9, her birthday, a package arrived. It was her husband's belongings, shipped to her from the carrier. Early the next morning, their son, Sean Robert Forwalder, was born.

Soon, Forwalder found out was that she was no longer considered a Navy wife. Instead, the military's insurance for civilians counted her as a nonactive-duty dependent, eligible for 75 percent reimbursement of health costs.

Because federal law prescribes the change in status, Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va., has proposed changing the rule. The staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee is reviewing the proposal.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department is looking at what it can do.

"The department does not wish to compound the grief of families who fall into this situation," Edward D. Martin, acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, wrote to Sen. John Warner, R-Va.

Forwalder hopes the law will be changed. But she said that won't bring back what she most wants, her husband and the father of her little boy.

"I'm glad I have him," she said of her son. Her husband's death "just doesn't seem real. We don't have a body. We don't have anything."