The parade of visitors to the Scioto County courthouse, steady
for the past two weeks, ground to a wistful halt.
Lynn Grimshaw, the only Ohio prosecutor
trying to run his office from a tent in the desert of Kuwait, was
taking off again for the Middle East.
The 15-day leave that ended yesterday offered time enough to
visit a son at college, catch up on seven homicide cases, celebrate
his 25th wedding anniversary and learn that, although he isn't due
home until April, he'll likely face an opponent in the March
primary.
Helen Lutz, a secretary in Grimshaw's office, said even the local
scofflaws are impressed.
"I was on the elevator the other day, and this gentleman who has,
shall we say, been in and out of the system quite a bit said he
always knew Mr. Grimshaw would volunteer,'' Lutz said. "He called
him a 'stand-up guy.' Even people on the other side -- people he's
prosecuted -- speak highly of him.''
Grimshaw, 54, had just eight days to prepare before he left Feb.
10 for a wartime stint as a JAG -- judge advocate general --
representing the military in civil and criminal legal matters. He
didn't have to go. A fellow major in the Army National Guard had
been called up first, but because that man had a daughter ill with
leukemia, Grimshaw took his place.
Lutz said not everyone understands. Those who do are proud of the
man who has run the prosecutor's office in his Ohio River community
for the past 27 years. One detractor learned as much several weeks
ago when he commented on the destruction of a luxury hotel in
Baghdad.
Well, the man said, looks like Grimshaw lost his digs.
"Mr. Grimshaw does not live in a hotel,'' Lutz shot back. "He
lives in a tent. In the desert. With camel spiders, mice, rats and
scorpions.''
While that is true, Grimshaw said his sacrifice is small compared
with those who risk everything, every day. His own life may be
inconvenienced, but, at present, no one is shooting at his tent in
northern Kuwait.
Grimshaw spends most of his days on one side or the other of the
law, he said, prosecuting "soldiers who do things they shouldn't
do'' or helping "soldiers who have legal troubles themselves.''
Pierced by loneliness and in search of some satisfying routine,
Grimshaw also has taken up running for the first time.
"If someone had told me the perimeter was 4 miles, I'd never have
started it,'' he said, laughing. "But you feel like you have to do
something -- to search for something.''
During the summer, when temperatures topped 120 degrees at least
two-thirds of the time, Grimshaw thought how hard it would be to
describe the heat to his family and friends in southern Ohio. Thirty
pounds slipped from his frame.
"It's like a hot hair dryer keeps blowing in your face,'' he
said. "I have to run at 5 in the morning.''
A Democrat, Grimshaw prefers not to discuss how he feels about
President Bush's stated reasons for the war.
"The time for that debate was back at the beginning of the
year,'' he said. "Regardless of the reasons, we are there now. And
the one thing I am absolutely, positively certain of is that we have
to finish what we have started.''
The other thing Grimshaw knows: Hellos beat goodbyes, every time.
If not for his anniversary Oct. 21, and the chance to spend time
with wife Beverly, he might not have taken advantage of the newly
available leave.
"When I started off, it was like a dream,'' Grimshaw said
yesterday. "I thought I was going to wake up back home. Then, after
a while, the desert became my reality. Ohio was the dream. And now,
here I am, driving back to the airport. Time to start over.''
rprice@dispatch.com
(November 9,
2003) U.S. ARMY MAJOR LYNN GRIMSHAW'S RETURN TO
WAR....(The Columbus Dispatch)... Read "Back to the
Desert," 
(January 01,
2004.)
Morgan County Prosecuting Attorney also called to Iraq War.... ....
