The thought struck me Monday as I was explaining to a group of fourth-graders the indelible role journalism plays in maintaining a free society.

The special-operations sailor – the father of, no doubt, the most respected kid in school – had just finished telling the students about the state-of-the-art weapons he and his cohorts use to obliterate bad guys. I was standing in front of them holding a blank note pad, encouraging the students to study hard in reading and writing so they, too, could someday report on Standards of Learning test results and school budget workshops.

The first yawn came about two minutes into my lecture. And why not?

Last month a team of Virginia Beach-based SEALs swooped into Pakistan in the dark of night, broke into a heavily fortified compound, killed the world’s most wanted terrorist and extracted a treasure trove of top-secret data, all in about 40 minutes. It took me at least that long to write the first sentence of this column.

These kids had no interest in learning about the day-to-day life of a journalist. Their little eyes began to glaze over. I started to talk about the rigorous editing process at The Pilot but stopped when I noticed a student lay his head on his desk and cover his face with his hands.

A quick glance at the clock. I was only five minutes into my 25-minute presentation. Desperation washed over me.

“When I worked in Ohio,” I blurted out, “I got to interview LeBron James – back before he turned villain and took his talents to South Beach.”

The drowsy eyes widened. Two of the boys who earlier had been taking turns spinning a pencil on their desk turned toward me and sat up in their chairs. I finally had their attention, and I wasn’t about to lose it.

I named every token celebrity I had ever met – Reggie Jackson, Pharrell Williams, that guy who played Mr. Belding on “Saved by the Bell” – and told the class about the time I ran a marathon without training for a story I wrote in college.

“Cooool,” one boy said, obviously impressed by physical ability. I nodded in his direction, basking in my own magnificence.

I abandoned my initial goal of encouraging this video-game generation to put down the remote and pick up a newspaper, and instead boasted about the perks of being a member of the media. Some journalists get paid to watch movies, I told them. Others eat at restaurants and actually are paid to complain about the food. Can you believe it?

Never mind that one of the students had earlier told me she would probably “never read a newspaper” because “don’t they already play the news on TV?” Sure, few if any of these students are likely to become print news subscribers, especially as lifelong members of the digital age. At least they had begun to admire me.

The positive momentum was dashed after I opened the floor for questions. The first hand shot up.

“Have you ever interviewed David Hasselhoff?” the girl asked, narrowing her eyes and waiting silently for my response. A moment later, a boy raised his hand. “Have you ever interviewed a member of SEAL Team 6?”

What little respect the class had for this boyish-looking newspaper reporter was lost when I hung my head and answered both questions, “No.”

This column appeared in the June 19 edition of The Virginia Beach Beacon, a community tab of The Virginian-Pilot.

PEMBROKE – Negative publicity and tribal backlash against the Lumbees’ contract with a Las Vegas gaming consultant pushed the Nevada firm to walk away from the agreement last week.

Tribal leaders said in a news release Friday the two parties had come to a mutual agreement to break the contract. But documents obtained Monday by The Fayetteville Observer indicate Lewin International initiated the divorce.

The Tribal Council voted Saturday to accept Lewin’s request to break the contract, which had given the consultant authority to handle the tribe’s push for federal recognition in exchange for a stake in future Lumbee economic ventures, including potential gambling.

Larry Lewin, the firm’s president, expressed a desire as early as mid-May to terminate the contract, according to a four-page letter from Lewin lawyer Bruce A. Fox.

Tribal officials did not return messages Monday seeking comment about the correspondence.

In the May 19 letter to tribal attorney Ed Brooks, Fox outlined Lewin’s concerns and rebuked what he called “misrepresentations” of the contract in the media.

The agreement stirred passionate protests among tribal members after it was ratified earlier this year.

Opponents, many of whom believe the relationship threatened Lumbee sovereignty and damaged the tribe’s credibility, were threatening to recall Tribal Council members who supported the contract.

The controversy drew national media attention.

Lewin concluded last month that the negative publicity made it impossible for the firm to fund a successful lobbying effort in Washington, Fox wrote in the letter.

The lawyer scolded the tribe for violating a privacy clause when someone in the tribal government leaked a copy of the contract to the public shortly after it was signed in December.

That alone entitled Lewin to break the contract, Fox wrote.

“It would be best, however, if the termination of the agreement can be accomplished in a cooperative manner,” Fox wrote.

In another letter obtained by the newspaper, Larry Lewin personally wrote to Tribal Chairman Purnell Swett last week to confirm plans to end the agreement.

The two parties agreed to break the pact during a phone conference on June 1, Lewin indicated in the letter.

“I have come to believe strongly in the justice of the tribe’s efforts to achieve federal recognition,” Lewin wrote. “However, . it is apparent that Lewin International’s continued association with the tribe will not facilitate this goal.”

Both parties agreed to terminate the contract without penalty for either side.

In his letter to tribal officials, Fox revealed details of contract negotiations that had previously been kept quiet.

Tribal leaders were the ones who sought out a relationship with the gaming consultant to help in their recognition fight, Fox wrote.

“Lewin International was in fact reluctant to engage in this transaction, and several times over the course of a period of years it was the tribal leadership which sought to renew the stalled negotiations,” Fox wrote.

The negotiations hit a snag, Fox wrote, when tribal leaders refused to bring the contract before the entire Tribal Council prior to signing it.

Tribal leaders told Lewin the 21-member council couldn’t be trusted to keep the contract confidential and instead insisted that then-Tribal Chairman Jimmy Goins and a few other tribal leaders had the authority to bind the tribe in a contract, Fox wrote.

Lewin accepted the compromise on the conditions that the contract come to a full Tribal Council vote within six months and that incoming Tribal Chairman Swett offer his full support, Fox wrote.

Swett previously indicated he was unaware of the contract before he took office in January.

Goins, Tribal Speaker Ricky Burnett and two top members of the Tribal Council’s federal recognition committee signed the contract at a private meeting on Dec. 28.

The council voted to ratify the agreement three months later at an unadvertised meeting in Raleigh, although multiple council members said they hadn’t seen the contract prior to the vote.

Fox also was critical of the tribe’s public handling of the agreement.

The lawyer said he was disappointed with the wording of a letter the tribe handed out during its spring pow-wow on May 2. The tribe declined to include Fox’s suggested changes to the letter, he wrote, and in doing so missed an opportunity for tribal leadership to influence public debate over the contract.

Fox was again disappointed with the tribe’s communications during a Tribal Family Meeting held May 7, he wrote. The meeting at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke was closed to nontribal members and the media.

Fox called the meeting “yet another missed opportunity to set the record straight and unify the tribe behind its leadership and the agreement.”

Lewin representatives maintained in both letters to tribal leaders that the agreement with the tribe was never about gambling. Tribal leaders struck a similar tone after the contract was made public, even though the agreement placed an emphasis on passing a bill that allowed for gaming.

With the contract behind them, tribal leaders said they will begin crafting a new strategy for winning federal recognition as early as this week.

Arlinda Locklear, a Maryland-based Lumbee lawyer, had spearheaded the tribe’s recognition effort, unpaid, for more than 20 years before the Lewin contract replaced her this year.

The tribe has not contacted her since ending the agreement, she said.

Congress recognized the tribe of about 50,000 members in 1956 but denied it financial benefits afforded to other native groups. Full recognition would bring the tribe millions of dollars in aid for education, health and child welfare.

A recognition bill passed the House last year and is awaiting a final vote on the Senate floor.

The legislation includes an amendment specifically denying the Lumbees the authority to operate casinos.

Staff writer Mike Hixenbaugh can be reached at hixenbaughm@fayobserver.com or (910) 486-3511.

Several Lumbees say they are troubled by the alleged involvement of a former tribal government official in orchestrating the tribe’s agreement with a Las Vegas gaming consultant.

Secrecy surrounding the contract and former Tribal Administrator Leon Jacobs’ role in luring the Nevada firm to Robeson County have been the subject of quiet debate throughout Lumbee country in recent weeks.

Tribal leaders have declined to talk about the agreement, which gives Lewin International exclusive authority to handle the tribe’s push for federal recognition in Congress.

In exchange for those services, the firm is promised a stake in future Lumbee economic ventures, including gambling.

The contract has stirred passionate protests among tribal members since it was ratified earlier this year.

Multiple sources close to the tribal government told The Fayetteville Observer that Jacobs was a key player in negotiating the deal.

Jacobs resigned from the tribe more than three years ago.

Some critics have decried the involvement of a nongovernment official in brokering a major tribal contract.

“It’s the classic shadow government making decisions behind the scenes,” said Jeremiah Swett, an Indian law expert in Washington and vocal critic of the Lewin agreement. “We have to recall these people, because that’s the only way we’re going to get our credibility back.”

Jacobs brushed off the criticism. Speaking from his home in Mystic, Conn., he would not confirm or deny that he had a role in the deal.

“The only thing I will say is, I have been trying very hard to make sure we have as much assistance as we can possibly need to get our bill through the Congress,” he said. “I would hope all of these negative individuals will concentrate on making their efforts into a positive push that will generate good will for the membership.”

Jacobs, in step with recent comments by top tribal officials, defended the Lewin contract. He said it is about winning recognition and federal aid, not opening a casino.

But the contract, which includes penalties up to $30 million should the tribe back out, places a premium on passing a recognition bill that allows for gambling. The apparent reversal of the tribe’s previous position in Washington could hurt Lumbee lobbying, some Indian law experts have said.

“I think it helps,” Jacobs said. “People don’t realize what we’re up against.”

Speaking through a spokesman Wednesday, Tribal Chairman Purnell Swett seemed to deny Jacobs’ role in helping land the consulting agreement.

Swett acknowledged that Jacobs has helped with the tribe’s federal housing program in recent years.

“This is the only area in which he represents the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina,” Swett said.

But Beth Jacobs, a relative of the former tribal administrator, said Leon Jacobs told her he worked to land the Lewin International deal.

“I know Leon helped connect Lewin with the tribe because he told me,” Beth Jacobs said.

Leon Jacobs acknowledged the conversation but declined to elaborate on it.

Beth Jacobs is among a handful of tribal members – along with Jeremiah Swett, the tribal chairman’s great-nephew – who helped form the Lumbee Sovereignty Coalition in protest of the Lewin agreement.

The group is working to recall Tribal Council members who supported the contract.

“We have to stand up and be heard,” Beth Jacobs said. “They aren’t representing their people anymore.”

Leon Jacobs, a Lumbee and Robeson County native, was hired as the tribe’s administrator in January 2004 after years of working in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Native American Programs in Chicago and for other tribes.

He stepped down in April 2006 after reportedly suffering a stroke.

Before his tenure in Pembroke, Jacobs was manager of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe in Connecticut, where he continues in a consulting capacity. The Mashantucket Pequot own and operate one of the largest gambling complexes in North America.

“The guy works for the biggest Indian casino in the nation, and they are trying to tell us all of this isn’t about gaming,” Jeremiah Swett said. “I don’t know who is buying this, but if they are, they’re buffoons.”

For three years after Leon Jacobs stepped down as tribal administrator, former Tribal Chairman Jimmy Goins kept the position vacant. Leon Jacobs continued to work for the tribe in an unofficial capacity, sources in the tribal government said.

It was during that period, Tribal Council members were told at a recent closed session, that Larry Lewin began talking with the tribe.

Goins served his last day as chairman in January, a few days after the contract was signed.

Neither Lewin nor Goins could be reached for comment.

Leon Jacobs defended the agreement and the process by which it was signed. He said the tribe’s initial support two years ago for removing Lumbee gambling from a federal recognition bill was a mistake because it limited the tribe’s sovereignty.

“Either way, there is no gaming in our bill,” Leon Jacobs said. “Why even talk about it? Let’s focus on the positive. Let’s focus on winning these federal services for our tribe.”

The first public sign of the Lewin contract came in September 2009, but few observers seemed to notice.

Goins presented a resolution before the Tribal Council that would give him, Tribal Speaker Ricky Burnett and council members Sharon Hunt and Pam Spaulding authority to “negotiate and bind” the tribe in contracts to help gain federal recognition.

The Tribal Council voted unanimously and without much discussion to approve the resolution, according to meeting minutes.

Three months later, on Dec. 28, Goins, Burnett, Spaulding and Hunt signed the contract with Lewin International during a private meeting that was unannounced to others on the Tribal Council.

In March, the Tribal Council voted 14-7 to ratify the contract during an unadvertised meeting in Raleigh. It was the first time some council members had seen the contract.

Burnett, whose signature appears on the agreement, admitted weeks later that he never read the contract.

“So you tell me,” Beth Jacobs said. “Who’s running the tribe?”

Tribal Councilwoman Louise Mitchell was among the minority that voted against the contract. She said she still doesn’t know many details about how it was negotiated.

“I don’t know why it had to be so secretive,” Mitchell said. “I would have preferred they would have had a roundtable discussion instead of going outside the permitter of the 21 council members. It should have come to all of us.”

Mitchell said she fears the deal has ended any hope of the tribe winning federal recognition in the next few years.

“If we were going to shift our recognition strategy, I wish it would have been discussed with the council members,” Mitchell said.

There are about 50,000 Lumbees, most of whom live in and around Robeson County.

Congress recognized the tribe in 1956 but denied it financial benefits afforded to other native groups. Full recognition would bring the tribe millions of dollars in aid for education, health and child welfare.

PEMBROKE – A controversial contract between the Lumbees and a Las Vegas gaming consultant may be souring lawmakers against federal recognition, according to Indian policy experts in Washington.

Although North Carolina’s two senators say the legislation remains on track, policy experts who have followed the bill believe the tribe’s internal wrangling and apparent change of position on gambling makes the bill a tough sell in an election year.

Earlier this year, the Lumbee Tribe ratified a deal with Lewin International that gives the consultant the exclusive right to lobby for federal recognition and guarantees the firm a stake in future Lumbee economic ventures, including casinos.

The contract has stirred passionate protest among tribal members, many of whom fear a binding relationship with the consultant threatens the tribe’s century-old push for recognition.

Congress is closer than ever to granting the 50,000-member Lumbee tribe full federal recognition, which would bring millions of dollars for education, health care and child welfare. And for the first time in recent memory, the tribe has presidential support.

But the recognition bill awaiting a final vote on the Senate floor specifically denies the tribe authority to open casinos – a concession by tribal leaders three years ago to help get the bill through the House.

“We gave our word of honor that this was our intention; that this wasn’t about gaming,” said Arlinda Locklear, the Maryland-based Lumbee lawyer who led the recognition lobbying effort for 20 years until the Lewin deal replaced her. “Now they’ve thrown that word of honor out the window.”

If the recognition bill doesn’t pass by the end of this year, it dies and the process starts over. Locklear said lawmakers are unlikely to consider the bill at this point.

“Our credibility has been damaged,” she said. “This contract sets the effort back years.”

Three experts in federal Indian policy told The Fayetteville Observer they believe the recognition bill is in jeopardy. They spoke on the condition they not be identified.

The sources identified six Republican senators who would almost certainly place a procedural hold on the Lumbee bill if it was brought for a vote. Two of the senators are running for re-election in November.

Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, who is also up for re-election, will have to persuade those lawmakers to allow a vote on the bill, the policy experts said. But the Lewin contract – whether or not gaming is in the bill – makes that a tough political sell, they said.

Publicity about the Lewin contract is also hurting the bill, the sources said.

Burr’s office doesn’t see it that way, a representative said.

And, in a statement, Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina said she remains committed to seeing the Lumbee bill passed this year.

Hagan, a Democrat, and Burr, a Republican, each threw their support behind the bill last year, as did Rep. Mike McIntyre of Lumberton.

Burr’s office said the Lewin contract isn’t even on their radar.

“It has done nothing in any way to affect our support in the push for Lumbee recognition,” said Burr spokesman David Ward. “We’re going to push on and we’re hopeful the bill will pass and that the Lumbees will receive the recognition they, and this office, have been pushing for.”

Burr opposes amending the bill to add gaming, Ward said. And although the Lewin contract places a premium on removing the anti-gaming language, Lumbee Chairman Purnell Swett has said he’d like to see the legislation pass as written.

A Lumbee policy expert in Burr’s office said the senator hopes to attach the recognition bill to another piece of legislation and bring it to a vote before the end of the year. Burr representatives said they haven’t been contacted by Lewin or anyone else seeking to get gaming back in the bill.

More than two months after the contract was ratified, Lewin has yet to register a lobbyist in Washington. The firm’s president, Larry Lewin, did not return phone calls.

“It’s not our business who the tribe is working with,” Ward said. “The senator is focussed on passing our bill.”

Opponents of Lumbee recognition – mostly other Indian groups – have remained mum on the Lewin contract.

Wilson Pipestem, a lobbyist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, said he is aware of the Lewin contract but declined to speak about his efforts in Washington.

Other Cherokee officials would not talk about the Lumbee agreement.

“The Eastern Band has not changed its position on Lumbee recognition,” Principal Chief Michell Hicks said in a statement.

News reports about the deal have appeared in several Indian publications across the country in recent months.

Lawrence Locklear, a Lumbee tribal member and outspoken opponent of the Lewin contract, helped form the Lumbee Sovereignty Coalition to protest the agreement. The group is working to recall Tribal Council members who continue supporting the contract.

“You better believe (other Indian groups) are talking about this,” Locklear said. “You know they’re using it to argue against our recognition.”

Fort Bragg officials say test results have ruled out the possibility that conditions inside homes on the installation contributed to the inexplicable deaths of 10 infants since 2007.

But a separate and ongoing probe into military housing by the Army Criminal Investigation Command and the Consumer Product Safety Commission has yet to eliminate any environmental factors in the deaths.

Despite the ongoing probe, officials with Fort Bragg and Picerne Military Housing declared Tuesday that the houses where infants died are safe.

Fort Bragg’s Directorate of Public Works ordered environmental tests at each of the 10 homes associated with the deaths, and those results were announced Tuesday.

“Across the board, none of them tested positive for anything that would contribute (to the deaths),” said Col. Stephen Sicinski, garrison commander at Fort Bragg.

The announcement came about a week after Fort Bragg officials disclosed the test results to current residents at the homes. Some of the parents whose babies died said they also were notified.

Jamie Hernan, a lawyer who represents the parents of four of the dead babies, said he and his clients are not satisfied with Fort Bragg’s findings.

“I’m not surprised the military has claimed there is no link between these deaths, but note that the Criminal Investigation Command maintains an open and ongoing investigation, as do other federal agencies,” Hernan said. “So clearly, the issue is not resolved, and the testing conducted by the military – in some cases years after the fact – certainly was not comprehensive enough to declare that their housing is safe.”

More thorough tests by CID and the Consumer Product Safety Commission are pending.

Investigators with the agencies have been testing air quality, building materials and other environmental factors at each of the homes where infants died.

It’s unclear when those tests will be complete, officials with both agencies said.

But an initial Consumer Product Safety Commission inspection of at least one of the Fort Bragg houses in question raised concerns about toxic Chinese drywall, according to a detailed safety commission investigative report obtained by The Fayetteville Observer.

The federal report, released this week following a Freedom of Information Act request by the newspaper, focuses on the home on Groesbeck Street in the Ardennes neighborhood where three infants were living at separate times before dying suddenly.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, the lead federal agency looking into claims related to Chinese drywall, was called in to assist in the military probe of infant deaths after residents on post raised concerns about the possible use of the toxic imported building material, which is known to emit harmful sulfur gasses.

A Consumer Product Safety Commission investigator visited the Groesbeck Street house on Sept. 9, the report said.

The agent noted that many of the home’s metal fixtures were corroded, according to the report, and several of the home’s copper pipe fittings and wires had become blackened. Both are signs of Chinese drywall, the investigator wrote in the report.

At least two different types of drywall were used throughout the home, which was built in 2005, the investigator said in the report. He also noted a strong chemical odor throughout the home.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission report also details unexplained health troubles experienced by the parents and siblings of the three infants while they were staying at the home.

Pearline Scully, whose 2-month-old son died Feb. 24, 2008, after living at the house, told the investigator she and her husband had breathing problems while living at the home, and her other children developed boils and rashes on their skin.

Melissa Pollard’s 3-month-old son died at the house on April 15, 2009. She told the CPSC agent she and her husband also had respiratory problems while living at the house, which she said smelled of “rotten eggs” and chemicals.

Bianca Outlaw, whose 7-month-old daughter died at the Groesbeck Street house a few months later on July 23, 2009, told the investigator her baby was healthy before they moved into the house, but she soon developed a runny nose and a cough. Outlaw said she and her husband also became ill while living at the home, according to the report.

Many of the conditions described in the safety commission’s investigative report are indicative of Chinese drywall, according to federal guidelines. Further testing was needed, the investigator said in the report.

The imported building material was used in mass quantity earlier this decade during the housing boom and during rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Picerne, the private contractor charged with managing housing at Fort Bragg, has torn down, rebuilt or renovated thousands of homes at the installation in recent years.

Six of the homes where infants died suddenly, including the Groesbeck Street home, were built or renovated during or after the housing boom.

The CPSC investigator collected drywall samples from the Ardennes neighborhood home and inquired about the origins of building materials used in the house.

Those and other tests are pending, a spokesman with the federal agency said.

Sicinski said he was unaware of the CPSC report and said he would question the validity of any investigation that raised the possibility of Chinese drywall being in the houses.

The tests ordered by Fort Bragg ruled out the possibility of toxic drywall at each of the houses where infants died, Sicinski said.

“From our perspective, the tests are conclusive,” he said. “I’m pretty confident that the homes are safe.”

Sicinski said the testing by Fort Bragg wasn’t meant to offer closure for families whose babies died, but added that he “hoped to provide reassurance that it wasn’t the house.”

Audrey Oxendine, chief of the Fort Bragg Directorate of Public Works Environmental Compliance Branch, echoed Sicinski’s remarks.

“I think our tests have shown that there are no problems with the houses,” she said.

Oxendine said the environmental tests were based on adult exposure limits because there are no limit standards for infants.

Testing on behalf of Fort Bragg was conducted by Matrix Health and Safety Consultants and Womack Army Medical Center’s Environmental Health Service Department of Preventive Medicine. The analysis of the results was then completed by two other private firms, EMSL Analytical and Microbac Laboratories.

The full findings have not been released publicly as Sicinski said officials needed time to redact names and addresses from the results, he said. But he said the full reports would be made available.

“We are prepared to share all of the findings,” Sicinski said.

Jay’Vair Pollard was a little more than 2 months old when he quit breathing April 15, 2009. The baby died that morning while sleeping in his mother’s arms at their home on Fort Bragg.

The boy’s grandmother, Lori Gray, said she had never cried so hard in her life.

That was until three months later, when another of her grandchildren, 7-month-old Ka’Mya Frey, died while taking a nap in the same home on the military post. The infant was standing in her crib and smiling just hours before her mother, Bianca Outlaw, found the baby cold and lifeless lying face-up on the mattress.

“That was it for me,” Gray said Wednesday. “I fell completely apart after that. I’ve never lost a child, but losing a grandchild is just as bad I think, and now I’ve lost two.”

Jay’Vair and Ka’Mya are among 10 infants who have died suddenly and without warning inside military housing units on Fort Bragg since January 2007.

On Tuesday, military officials announced that all 10 deaths are being reviewed to determine if they might be connected. So far, though, officials said the investigation has turned up no common thread – other than location – linking the cases in any way.

Outlaw said she finds that hard to believe. She choked back tears Wednesday as she described over the phone the shock of finding her daughter dead.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Outlaw said. “I was frantic. That’s something I’m always going to live with for the rest of my life.”

The baby died during an extended visit with Melissa Pollard, Gray’s daughter, and her soldier husband in the Ardennes neighborhood on post, Outlaw said. Cody Frey, Ka’Mya’s father and Outlaw’s fiancee, is Melissa Pollard’s brother.

It was only months after the Pollards’ son, Jay’Vair, died suddenly, but Outlaw never thought her child might be at risk. The baby never even had a cold before visiting Fort Bragg, Outlaw said.

The Pollards only found out several weeks later, after speaking with neighbors, that a third baby whose family had been living in the same housing unit died unexpectedly two years earlier while at an off-post baby-sitting service.

“When we learned that, that’s when we knew there had to be something going on in that house,” Outlaw said. “My daughter was healthy before we went up there. It can’t just be a coincidence.”

Jamie Hernan, the lawyer representing Outlaw, Frey and the Pollards, has been pressing Fort Bragg officials and Picerne Military Housing representatives to release the results of environmental tests conducted at the house, but they have refused, he said.

Chris Grey, a spokesman with the Army Criminal Investigative Command, said test results from the homes would be made public when the military investigation is complete.

“If everything is fine – if all the tests have come back negative – why not lay everything out on the table and say, ‘This is what we’re working with. Here are the test results,’ ” Hernan said. “My clients just want answers.”

Hernan said other families have started reaching out to him, asking for help and demanding answers.

Among them was Spc. Nathanael Duke and his wife, Krystyna, who lost their 6-week-old son, Gabriel, in March. They say investigators removed chunks of drywall and carpeting and sent them to a lab before returning weeks later and telling them to move out immediately.

“They said we had Chinese drywall,” Krystyna said, referring to the imported building material known to emit high levels of sulfur gases. The Dukes are certain that’s what killed their baby.

But John Shay, a program manager with Picerne Military Housing, said subsequent environmental and hazardous material tests at the home were negative.

Shay said the air, building materials and other items have been tested at all the units where infants have died. Toxic black mold and contaminated drywall from China have been ruled out in each case, he said.

About 18,000 people live in roughly 6,200 houses on Fort Bragg.

Since Picerne took over Fort Bragg’s housing seven years ago, the private firm has torn down and rebuilt or renovated thousands of homes. Three of the houses where infants died were new, three had been renovated and three had undergone minor renovations, Shay said.

Paris Mayo is scared contractors took shortcuts or made mistakes on the housing. Mayo’s 3-month-old daughter, Kiely, died unexpectedly in September 2008 while living in the Casablanca neighborhood on post.

Mayo and her husband moved away for a while but have since returned to the community, not aware that other babies had died in base housing. Now they fear their newborn son might be at risk.

“I want to make sure I keep him safe,” Mayo said of the 5-week-old child. “I’m like everyone else. I want answers.”

Gray, Jay’Vair and Ka’Mya’s grandmother, said she prays nobody else has to experience what her children have suffered through.

“We want answers,” Gray said. “We want to know what happened. If someone is responsible, they need to stand up and say, ‘Hey, we made a mistake. We’re sorry.’ “

The rate of sudden and unexplained infant deaths in two major North Carolina military communities jumped to nearly twice the national average during the five years after the Iraq war began.

The spike in inexplicable infant deaths in Cumberland and Onslow counties – the homes of Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune – occurred during a period when the statewide rate of such fatalities held steady, according to a Fayetteville Observer analysis of North Carolina birth and death records.

Between 2003 and 2008, about 1 in every 634 babies born in Cumberland County died of unknown causes or sudden infant death syndrome before their first birthday, nearly twice the national average.

The rate of unexplained infant deaths in Onslow County was even worse over that same period, at roughly 1 in 503, according to reports compiled from the State Center for Health Statistics.

The frequency of unexplained infant deaths in Cumberland and Onslow counties had been in line with state averages in the years leading up to 2003, when the Iraq war started. Since then, an official with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said, both counties have been near the top in the state in cases of inexplicable infant deaths.

While little research has been conducted examining possible connections between military life and infant mortality rates, several experts in the field said the stress of multiple deployments could be affecting how well young parents are able to care for their children.

The state does not track the number of infant deaths among families stationed at military installations, so it’s difficult to tell if the higher rates of infant deaths in those counties are attributed to military families or the civilian population.

Regardless, parental stress is an unlikely explanation for the mysterious deaths of three babies whose families lived at different times in the same housing unit on Fort Bragg, said Marta Pirzadeh of the State Child Fatality Task Force.

The parents of one of the three infants who died weren’t even in the military but were visiting family members on post.

The military is continuing to investigate those infant fatalities along with seven others that have occurred inside on-post housing units since 2007.

Military investigators have been testing building materials and air quality inside the homes to determine if environmental conditions might have contributed to the deaths. Those tests have so far come back negative. Foul play also has been ruled out in each case, officials said.

“I think it is certainly rare that there would be three undetermined infant deaths within one house,” Pirzadeh said. “I can understand why that would raise questions about conditions inside the home and other environmental factors.”

Robert Murphy, the director of the Center for Child and Family Health at Duke University has studied the effects of war and deployment on North Carolina military communities in recent years. Although most military families usually rise above the stress of deployment, he said, many young parents struggle to cope when spouses are gone for months at a time.

Roberts emphasized that he can make no conclusions regarding parental behavior and the recent deaths of several infants at Fort Bragg.

“The more stress you’re under, the more prone you are to periods of being ineffective as a parent,” Murphy said. “There are some studies that suggest stress associated with multiple deployments leads to higher rates of child abuse, domestic violence and overall parental neglect. It’s natural that when you have a population under stress, you will see more of that.”

When parents are stressed out, they’re less likely to be attentive to the needs of their children, said Deborah Gibbs, a senior research analyst with RTI International, a Triangle-based research firm that has studied the impact of military deployments on child welfare.

A stressed-out mother might not remember to lay an infant down on its back to sleep, Gibbs said, or a depressed parent might neglect to take a sick baby to the doctor.

The majority of military spouses survive deployments without falling to that level, Gibbs said. Vast support networks are set up for military families help, she said.

But for some military parents, she said, the load is too heavy.

“It certainly appears, based on the research, that deployments can be a risky time for military families,” Gibbs said. “There are some parents in the military who just get overwhelmed or depressed by the situation … and they stop doing things to care properly for their children.”

Every infant death is unique, Pirzadeh said. There have been some studies into the effects of stress and environmental conditions on infant mortality, but the research is limited, she said.

“In the absence of that, we provide families with information that will help reduce the odds that their baby will die of SIDS,” Pirzadeh said. “Whether they are in the military or not, parents should avoid smoking, always lay their baby down on its back and maintain temperatures below 85 degrees.”

He was memorialized as an astute businessman who used his riches to entertain friends, impress young women and care for his family.

But on the day an associate found Ray Mulkey Jr. slumped over a steering wheel in North Myrtle Beach this summer, he was broke and alone.

Mulkey killed himself days after rewriting his will and months after borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends, business partners and the bank he helped start some 10 years ago.

In place of the image of a respected businessman, Mulkey, 63, left behind at least $42 million in debts and few assets to repay them.

His business dealings have become the subject of a criminal investigation by the N.C. Department of Insurance, and his relationship with lenders has caught the attention of the Secretary of State’s Office.

At least 20 banks and more than a dozen people appear to have lost millions investing with the former trust officer who built what appeared to be a fortune out of a family-owned insurance company in rural Harnett County.

The details of Mulkey’s swift fall from prominence remain a mystery to most who knew him. Some who saw him just weeks before his suicide said he showed no signs of anxiety or depression – no warning that he might take his own life.

“He was the same good man I’ve always known,” said Dunn businessman and longtime Mulkey friend Johnny Simpson.

A few odd financial moves, though, and a documented effort to borrow huge sums of business capital in the final months of his life indicate there might have been some reason for concern.

But no one seemed to notice.

Friends praised Raymond Lee Mulkey Jr. at his funeral for his generosity, kindness and charm.

Those who lost chunks of their life savings investing with the man have different memories.

Leroy Morgan’s long-term financial plans died along with Mulkey this summer. A third of his fixed retirement income was tied to a $200,000 investment he made in 2008.

Morgan, 64, met Mulkey a few years ago through their shared association with the Fayetteville Shrine Club. Mulkey had a standing offer among his fellow Shriners back then – invest in his premium finance companies and receive 12 percent annual interest payments, guaranteed.

It was an offer Mulkey first began making to friends and business partners more than 20 years ago.

“It sounded too good to be true,” Morgan said. “That was my first reaction. But you check the guy out, and he’s a pillar of the community. He was a founder of New Century Bank in Dunn, you know? He was just what you would think a real pillar of the community is. I was hoodwinked.”

Morgan wasn’t alone.

Between 1993 and earlier this year, more than a dozen people – including some of Mulkey’s own family members and former in-laws – took up his lucrative investment offer.

Mulkey was rarely late on interest payments, several of his creditors said. But soon after he killed himself this summer, the monthly payments stopped and checks started to bounce.

“I don’t know much of what’s going on,” said Robert English, an elderly man who invested with Mulkey two years ago. “I know he died, and I had money involved that I ain’t getting back. That’s about it.”

Lawyers representing several of the investors said they believe Mulkey was running a Ponzi scheme – using new investments and bank financing to pay dividends to earlier investors.

If that was the case, it’s unclear what Mulkey did with much of the money, lawyers said. He owed banks more than $38 million when he died and was under water on almost every property he owned.

Estate filings in Harnett County Superior Court indicate that most of the money is gone.

“That’s money I was counting on,” said Morgan, who has since moved with his wife to Fancy Gap, Va. “Now what am I going to do?”

Not everyone who invested lost big with Mulkey.

Some of his creditors – friends such as Barbara Godwin, John C. Allen Jr., Sam Ausley and others – began investing with him more than 15 years ago.

Dewey Meshaw said he was happy with the arrangement. Meshaw, the general manager of the North Carolina Joint Underwriting Association in Cary, invested $150,000 in Mulkey’s companies beginning in 1995.

“I more than made my investment back over the years,” said Meshaw, who considered Mulkey a good friend. “I’m certainly not going to get my principal back, but that’s OK. I just took what he was paying interest-wise, reinvested it and did very well with Ray.”

Those who invested later, such as Morgan, weren’t as lucky. Fellow Fayetteville Shrine Club member John English and his family invested more than $1.1 million in Mulkey’s companies in recent years. The Shrine Club itself, which raises money annually to buy vans for transporting burned and crippled children to the hospital, invested $55,000 with Mulkey only months before his suicide.

“We didn’t get to cash in for 20 years like some of these other folks,” Morgan said. “I’m just an old redneck country boy. I’m not a big finance guy. I worked hard for that money, and it really hurts that it was taken from me.”

Even in his final months, as he scrambled to stabilize his financial house of cards, Mulkey was able to persuade a few new associates to invest in his businesses.

“It’s like he was working so hard to fool everybody,” one of the later investors said. “We all bought into it, but it was all a fraud.”

Mulkey worked more than 30 years to build his reputation as an honorable businessman throughout southeastern North Carolina and beyond. He cut his teeth in assets management as a trust officer at Waccamaw Bank in Whiteville after his graduation from Campbell University in 1968.

A decade later, Mulkey moved back to Dunn with his first wife, Elizabeth Denning Berryhill, and bought her father’s insurance company. He excelled in the business, friends said.

“Everybody in this town knew Ray Mulkey,” said Stan Coleman, a Harnett County financial planner. “He really built a name for himself over the years as someone who you sort of admired.”

Mulkey relied on his Southern charm and a firm handshake to sell insurance policies in the early years, friends and associates said. But in 1980, the businessman found a more efficient way to increase his revenue stream.

Mulkey opened Budg-O-Matic that year – the first of his many companies offering in-house financing to policyholders. Premium financing – a service giving short-term loans to help low-income people pay for expensive insurance policies – is a no-lose investment, Mulkey was known to tell potential investors.

He expanded the financing service to other area insurance companies in the early 1990s, according to records. He borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends and millions more from banks to incorporate dozens of the businesses under variations of the name N.C. Premium Finance.

The companies became the centerpiece of Mulkey’s business portfolio. In May, just months before his suicide, the insurance salesman was claiming a net worth of roughly $10 million, crediting the financing companies for the lion’s share of his income.

He used the reported revenue as leverage to buy properties and open businesses from Fayetteville to the coast. Over the years, he became a legitimate player in industries from residential development to financial planning, all the while hanging his hat on his insurance and premium finance ventures.

When he died, Mulkey was running more than 30 financing businesses out of a single office in Dunn.

They were all shut down a few weeks ago. State insurance regulators audited the companies after his death and found they were “in severe financial duress” – worth a fraction of what Mulkey had claimed.

Bill Hedgepeth, president at New Century Bank, said he was stunned. For more than a decade, Mulkey had been presenting the bank he helped start with falsified financial statements to borrow large sums.

The bank expects to write off up to $11 million as a result of Mulkey’s dealings, and the community lender has launched its own civil investigation to determine if money can be recovered.

New Century is one of several banks that had provided Mulkey with business capital. BB&T, Cornerstone Bank in Wilson and Four Oaks Bank in Johnston County are expected to lose millions of dollars each.

“We were all fooled,” Hedgepeth said during a meeting with reporters last week. “We were all led to believe something that wasn’t true. It was a shock, honestly.”

David Warren, the lawyer representing New Century in the case, said that although the premium finance companies appear to be at the center of the fraud investigation, they were, at least at some level, functioning companies.

“Don’t think the whole thing was a scam,” Warren said. “There are people out there who got car insurance through these companies, and thank God they did. What was inflated and was a scam was the true receivables at all these companies versus what was reported to lenders.”

Lonnie Player Jr., a Fayetteville lawyer representing at least seven people who invested with Mulkey and lost big, said he wonders if living parties might have known something was amiss.

“My first question to anyone who is discovered to have known about (the fraud) would be, ‘Why didn’t you bring this to light?’ ” Player said. ” ‘Why did you stay silent?’ Because innocent people were being harmed.”

Teresa Smith, the manager at each of the finance companies for the past 20-plus years, has refused to speak with reporters since Mulkey’s death.

The younger of Mulkey’s two sons, Lee Mulkey, is listed as the owner of two of the finance companies that have been shut down, but he, too, has declined to comment.

Many of the people who knew Mulkey best during his early years as a Dunn insurance salesman say they lost touch with him as he moved his primary business interests to Fayetteville, then to the coast.

One former Harnett County lawyer, speaking on the condition that his name not be published, said his old friend seemed to fall in love with money later in life.

“Ray could get bank financing better than anyone I’ve ever known,” the lawyer said. “That’s a hell of a lot of money to spend, though. I don’t know what he did with it all.”

That’s what his creditors hope to learn. Private investigators for multiple law firms have been combing through Mulkey’s personal life in recent weeks, asking friends and old business partners where the insurance salesman liked to spend his time and money.

The trail seems to lead east.

Mulkey bought his first coastal residence in 1994, a year after he and his first wife divorced.

In the years that followed, he made a second home for himself in Wrightsville Beach and North Myrtle Beach, S.C. That’s where Mulkey loved to golf with friends and dine with business associates.

It’s also where, in 2003, he married his second wife, Debbie Livingston – a fair-skinned Charleston, S.C., native 22 years his junior.

They had been married less than a year when Mulkey learned that his new spouse had an affair with a younger man while she was on a cruise, according to court filings. In court records, he accused her of running up $50,000 in debt on his credit cards and smearing his good name.

“The word is all over town, all of our friends know about this and I have never been more embarrassed in all my life,” Mulkey wrote when he filed for legal separation in August 2005.

He filed for divorce two years later. When the dust settled, Livingston walked away from the brief marriage with about $110,000, according to records, as promised in their prenuptial agreement.

Livingston, who did not respond to interview requests for this story, wasn’t the only younger woman whom Mulkey courted during his final years, friends and associates said.

Mulkey spent many evenings sharing drinks with pals and dining with girlfriends at The Bridge Tender restaurant at Wrightsville Beach, a bartender at the upscale establishment said.

He was known to golf a few times a month with fellow New Century founder Bozie Tart at the Landfall Country Club in Wilmington, a clubhouse employee said.

A manager at Seapath Tower, where Mulkey kept a waterfront condo, said he had been instructed by family members not to speak with reporters about Mulkey’s affairs.

But a trail of property records in the two coastal communities where Mulkey loved to work and play showed the first signs of financial irregularities.

The businessman owed The Bank of The West more than $50,000 for a three-year-old motorboat valued at half that.

He owed Horry County State Bank nearly $1.4 million on a few North Myrtle Beach properties worth a combined $450,000, and he was behind on tax payments for each.

Mulkey was claiming an annual income of about $1.1 million in 2008, according to North Carolina tax records, but in 2009 he began taking out second mortgages on a few properties.

His portfolio was showing signs of cracking, yet the bank financing and investments from friends kept rolling.

Jimmy Smith, a partner with Mulkey at Southeastern Insurance in Fayetteville, said there were no signs his associate was struggling – financially or emotionally.

“In all my years dealing with Mr. Mulkey, there was never any evidence of fraud,” Smith said. “I was shocked like everybody else. Nobody saw this coming.”

Terry Price was starting to get worried. The North Myrtle Beach home builder had left several messages with his friend and business partner, but they had all gone unreturned.

And it wasn’t like Ray Mulkey to ignore phone calls.

Adding to the stress, Price said, Mulkey’s son Lee had called him a few days earlier and asked him to look out for his father.

“He said something wasn’t right,” Price recalled.

Around 9 a.m. on Aug. 16, Price slipped through a faulty back door at 1212 Clipper Drive and found Mulkey’s body in the garage. His body was cold in the driver’s seat of a luxury sedan. A black pistol was resting next to it.

Price – like almost everyone who knew Mulkey – said he was stunned. There was no reason to believe Mulkey might kill himself.

“No reason,” Price said, weeks after finding Mulkey dead. “I never thought that would happen.”

Mulkey’s coastal real estate business was doing well despite the recession, Price said. Almost every time the two men partnered on a project in North Myrtle Beach the past several years, Price said, the property sold and both men profited.

Of the seven or eight houses Price and Mulkey built together, the Clipper Drive property was the only one yet to sell.

“The world lost a great guy, a hell of a man,” Price said. “I wouldn’t have ever thought anything like that would happen.”

Many others who knew Mulkey said there was little indication of financial trouble. A series of decisions in the final months of his life – documented in claims against his estate and public records across four counties – tells another story.

In early March, Mulkey used his connections at Highland Country Club to persuade prominent Fayetteville lawyer Mike Williford and his brother to invest a combined $400,000 in his premium finance companies. The Shrine Club gave Mulkey $40,000 on the same day.

They were the first of several personal investments Mulkey collected in the final months of his life.

In the weeks leading up to his suicide, Mulkey borrowed $50,000 from a friend, opened two personal lines of credit totaling $260,000, renewed nearly $11 million in corporate loans, refinanced a few beach properties and started moving assets.

In late April, he closed on the North Myrtle Beach home he shared with his second wife during their brief marriage. He sold the house in the gated Bluffs at Tidewater community for $399,000 – about $30,000 under tax value.

Two days later, Mulkey paid $120,000 for an ocean-front condo in North Myrtle Beach and later signed ownership of the property over to his son Lee.

Lee sold the property a couple of months after his father’s death for $109,000.

In June and July, Mulkey accepted additional individual investments in his premium finance companies totaling $415,000 – including $100,000 from his first wife.

“He was working … to bring in new money,” one of Mulkey’s later investors said. “He must have known he was running out of time.”

On Aug. 9, the same day he signed the condo over to his son, Mulkey rewrote his will, leaving $10,000 to his older son, Robert, and everything else in the estate to Lee.

A day later, Mulkey visited doctors in Wilmington for a CAT scan and MRI on his brain and later told friends he planned to spend some time at the beach.

By the end of the week, Raymond Lee Mulkey Jr. was dead.

The image he built over three decades was fading. The financial mess he left in its place could take years to settle.

And the people who trusted him are left with the bill for his lifetime of luxury and excess.

“It hurts,” Morgan said. “I’m sitting here smiling, but tonight, when I’m trying to go to sleep, and I’m tossing and turning, I would have somebody’s legs broken if I thought it would do any good. But that’s not going to do any good.

“He’s dead; he’s gone. And I have to move forward. We all do, I guess.”

Staff writer Greg Barnes contributed to this report.

LUMBERTON – Say Reh stared through smudged glass as the rusted yellow school bus carried him past rolling tobacco fields, hollowed-out farmhouses and rows of mobile homes. This isn’t the America the 25-year-old read about as a child, growing up in a bamboo hut on the other side of the world.

The suffocating stench of raw meat and sweat mingled in the muggy midday air. He clutched a pair of rubber work boots and gazed out the window, watching fields and trees flash by.

Say Reh is one of more than 400 refugees from the Karenni state of Myanmar who have settled in Robeson County in the past 10months. The bus was carrying him and about 40 others home after a morning shift at the Mountaire Farms poultry processing plant in Lumber Bridge.

This existence – slicing up chickens for next to minimum wage in rural North Carolina – isn’t what Say Reh imagined almost two years ago when he boarded a plane in Thailand, bound for a new life in the United States. It isn’t what many of the refugees expected.

“It’s different,” Say Reh said in choppy English, raising his voice to speak over the rumbling diesel engine. “But it is good here.”

Almost anything is better than the lives the refugees left behind.

The Karenni have been persecuted for more than a half century in the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma. Most of the refugees now living in Lumberton lived for between 10 and 20 years in primitive refugee camps along the west Thai border before fleeing to the United States.

They stayed in small huts made of bamboo and teak hacked from the jungle. There was no power or running water. Many of the refugees were infected with malaria and suffered from malnutrition and depression.

In Lumberton, the Karenni have been placed in small apartments and rental houses scattered throughout the city. They live two to three families to a home and spend most of their time inside.

Few of the refugees speak any English. Many more are still learning about how to use electric appliances and must be reminded to watch for traffic in the street.

Those who are old enough to work are bused 30 minutes to and from the chicken processing plant each day by an employee management firm under contract with Mountaire.

The chicken processor has been paying the contractor, Summit Management Co., per worker to bring the refugees to Lumberton. The agency supplies the Karenni with housing and transportation at no cost to the workers.

Mountaire officials wouldn’t speak with a reporter about the arrangement, but workers outside the chicken plant said the Karenni refugees have replaced large numbers of Hispanics at the factory.

Tim Wiley, the owner of Summit Management, said as much.

“There has been a great need for these food processing companies to replace the undocumented worker,” Wiley said. “They’re scared to cut (illegal immigrants) loose because they’re not sure they can find someone to replace them. That’s where we come in.”

Wiley and his wife opened an office in Lumberton this spring to serve as a gathering place for the refugees. There, Summit employees and translators help the Karenni fill out health care documents, get the appropriate vaccinations and enroll their children in public school.

The firm also offers free English lessons and summer day care for school-age children. Next month, the agency plans to start teaching driver’s training courses.

“We’re not just flying them in here and cutting them loose,” Wiley said. “We’re working to prepare them for life here. It’s like raising children all over again.”

The Karenni began arriving in Robeson County in small numbers last winter. The majority of the refugees, though, only moved here within the past few months.

Many have struggled to adjust to life, both in and outside the plant.

Nge Reh sat cross-legged on the floor at the rental house he and his family have been sharing with a few other refugees in East Lumberton.

His hands were sore and his eyes heavy from long hours at the chicken plant. He feels isolated living in Robeson County, he says through a translator, because people in the community can’t understand him.

“We cannot communicate,” Nge Reh said in his native Karenni language.

A rerun of “Desperate Housewives” buzzed on a small TV across the room as he spoke. Nge Reh stared blankly at the screen while two of his three children climbed on him and tugged at his shirt.

His wife was still at work, finishing her morning shift at the chicken plant. The couple, like many of the married refugees, work opposite hours to ensure someone is always home with the children.

His new life is a lonely one, the refugee said. But he wouldn’t change anything.

“It is much better here than in the camps,” Nge Reh said. “Here, we have human rights and a future for our children.”

Nge Reh and his co-workers are among a growing number of refugees from Myanmar who have begun moving in droves from major U.S. cities to find work at slaughterhouses throughout the rural South.

Poultry processing is a harsh way to achieve upward mobility, but that’s exactly what these jobs represent for the Karenni.

The work can be strenuous. At the plant, hundreds of workers stand elbow-to-elbow at conveyor belts, wearing earplugs and wielding knives or scissors to debone and slice raw chickens. The tasks, completed at a hectic pace, can strain arms, wrists and backs.

Mountaire pays the refugees $8.20 an hour, more than twice what the average Karenni could earn in a day back home. All workers start at the same salary regardless of race or ethnicity, a plant human resources officer said.

In many cases, food processing is the only work the refugees can find.

“What happens is, the government brings these refugees to big cities thinking it will be easier for them to find work and assimilate,” Wiley said. “But there isn’t work, and after eight months, the government benefits stop. Then what?”

The meat packers started turning to refugees – who are here legally on temporary visas – in response to the growing government crackdown on illegal immigration over the past few years.

The Perdue Farms chicken packing plant in Rockingham has been paying a nonprofit organization to bring in refugees from Myanmar since 2008, according to published reports. The Smithfield Foods hog processing plant in Tar Heel also is said to have hired a number of refugees in recent years, but a company official declined to comment.

Not all the refugee contractors are as committed as Wiley to helping the workers get settled, he said.

“The way we do it, this isn’t a very profitable business,” he said.

Each day, three women from the firm travel to the refugees’ homes and teach them how to use household appliances, set the thermostat and operate TV remote controls.

The company is assisting the Karenni in an effort to establish their own community at a new mobile home park in town. They want to preserve their culture, Wiley said.

“That’s not something we’re required to do, but it’s something I think we must do,” he said. “It wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t. It’s a whole new world out there for them.”

It’s also a dangerous world.

A few refugee families were relocated to a new home this spring after they witnessed a Lumberton woman being gunned down in her front yard. They were terrified, Wiley said, so the contractor agreed to move them.

“We’re trying to keep them out of the worst neighborhoods,” he said.

Even then, the Karenni face daily hazards.

A 23-year-old refugee, Hso Reh, was killed this spring when a driver ran him over from behind on his bicycle. He had been in town for less than two weeks.

Another refugee, said to have been riding on the handlebars, was injured. Both men were wearing dark clothes and had no reflectors while riding late at night, according to a police report.

The incident prompted volunteers from Hyde Park Baptist Church to get involved.

“It just broke my heart,” said Carole Allen, an employee with the church. “I can’t imagine being in another country, not knowing the language and not having anyone there for you. I told our deacon, ‘They don’t speak our language. They don’t know our culture. This is a huge need for our community.’ “

Hyde Park volunteers started offering lessons on bicycle safety, while others in the church organized donation drives for the Karenni. Last month, the church hosted a cultural exchange dinner with the refugees.

“We couldn’t really communicate very well, but we shared food, and it was a good time,” Allen said.

The Karenni – mostly Baptists and Catholics after years of missionary efforts at the refugee camps – have begun holding their own Christian service inside the church gymnasium. They sing American worship songs and pray for their family members back home.

Last month, Hyde Park started paying the Karenni pastor a salary so he could quit his job at the chicken plant.

“Whatever we can do to reach out to them and help them,” Allen said, “we’re going to do it. We don’t have to fly overseas to be missionaries.”

Not everyone in Robeson County has been so receptive. Years of confinement in the refugee camps have, in many ways, left the Karenni ill equipped for their new lives here. Some residents have begun to push back.

Geneva McIntosh stood on the front stoop outside her home at Carthage Square apartments on a recent afternoon and pointed to a line of T-shirts and blue jeans slung over bushes next door.

“It’s how they dry their clothes,” the 73-year-old woman said. “It’s ridiculous.”

More than 40 Karenni refugees have moved into the apartment complex off Carthage Road in the past six months. At first, McIntosh said, she was intrigued by the new faces. Then she grew tired of them.

“We don’t like it,” McIntosh said. “They leave garbage all over the place. They spit everywhere. They bathe outside. It’s a nuisance.”

McIntosh said she and other neighbors want to have the refugees evicted.

“Are they even here legally?” McIntosh said. “I think it’s unfair to bring people here from all over the world to take our jobs. There are people here in Robeson County who need those jobs.”

Lumberton city officials and police have fielded a handful of calls from residents like McIntosh who complain about refugees spitting in public, piling trash outside their homes and bathing in their backyards.

“We’re trying to teach them they can’t do that stuff here,” Wiley said. “But it’s going to be a process. Some people, no matter what, they just don’t like foreigners.”

After a few months in Lumberton, the Karenni still meet hostility on a near-daily basis, Wendy Jordan said.

Jordan drives a bus for Summit Management and has been helping the Karenni enroll their children in school. She also takes the refugees shopping on weekends.

“As Americans, we are the world’s worst at accepting new people,” she said. “We could learn a lot from them if we let them.”

Thay Law has made it his goal to enlighten those who look down on his people.

The 33-year-old is among the Karenni refugees who have settled in Lumberton. He speaks near-fluent English and drives a car.

Thay Law works for the management company to help his people adjust to their new lives. He also hopes to educate Robeson County residents about his people’s true aspirations, he said.

“We have come here legally,” Thay Law said. “We came to work and be free. We are eligible for (government) benefits, but our people want to work.”

The Karenni arrived in the United States as permanent residents. After a year, they can apply for a green card, which puts them on the road to citizenship within five to seven years.

More than 120 Karenni children started at public schools throughout Lumberton last week. Most of them already speak better English than their parents.

“That generation will be fine,” said Thay Law, himself a father of three. “They will learn and have a good life.”

As for the adults, nobody wants to slice a chicken for the rest of their life, Thay Law said. But his people will do what it takes to be free from oppression and to offer their children a better future. If that means long hours working jobs that most Americans shun, then so be it.

Beh Reh, like many of the refugees, doesn’t particularly enjoy his job at Mountaire. But it’s what he must do to provide for his children, he said.

The 35-year-old hopped across the living room on one foot to answer the door a few weeks ago. He had his left leg blown off in a land-mine explosion nearly 12 years ago.

The refugee has finally adjusted to walking on a prosthetic, he said through a translator, but it’s uncomfortable after long shifts at the chicken plant.

“It’s made it very difficult because I have to stand all day,” he said. “I get cramps in my leg.”

Beh Reh gets no special treatment at the plant, he said. Then again, he has never thought to ask for it.

His 4-year-old son jumped up and down on the couch as he spoke. Beh Reh gently scolded the child, then turned away and smiled.

“I work to support my family,” he said in Karenni. “It’s what I must do.”

Back on the bus, the window view of rural farmland had been replaced by lines of small bungalow houses, car-lined streets and cracked city sidewalks.

Say Reh perked up in his seat as it rounded a corner and neared the Lumberton apartment complex where he has lived the past 10 months. His pregnant wife, Kue Meh, was waiting for him inside.

“I met her here,” Say Reh said.

His face lights up as he details their speedy courtship. The couple met in Lumberton and were married a few months later, he said.

She has stopped working at the chicken plant, at least until the baby comes, he said.

The fact that his first-born child will be an American is not lost on the young refugee.

He doesn’t mind working at the slaughterhouse, he said, but he hopes for something better one day. Perhaps after a few years, he can become a teacher or take a job as a social worker.

For now, he cuts chickens.

The young husband and father-to-be gathered his boots and backpack as the old school bus crossed onto his block. He shared one last thought about his new life before standing to leave.

“It is not easy for my people (in Robeson County),” he said. “We have to learn about how to live and adjust to life.”

Because for better or worse, this is home now.