Word: mayorally
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...Mayor...
...year and a half ago, the mayor, the police chief and eight other men from this Arkansas town of 819, an hour's drive north of Little Rock, were called up for duty in Iraq by the Arkansas National Guard; one more was called by the Air Force Reserve. It was a blow not just to the weekend warriors-who were more accustomed to tornado cleanup than fighting-but to their families and Bradford's civic life as well. The town's big projects-to update the water system, jail the local methamphetamine dealers and make a clean sweep...
...intact after a year of hunting insurgents on the streets of Baghdad's scariest neighborhoods, like Sadr City and Adhamiyah. Wherever you go in Bradford these days-down to McCall's Family Restaurant for lunch or up to Edens Quick Check for some gossip-faces light up as the mayor and the police chief turn up, making their daily rounds. But like the estimated 226,000 other weekend soldiers who have returned from service abroad since the 9/11 attacks, Bradford's men came home to new and jumbled emotions as well as huge celebrations. The mayor, his own business near...
...mayor, who grew up one of 14 kids in the nearby city of Searcy, is taking the failure of his insulation business in Little Rock hard as well. "It's so embarrassing. When I left, it was netting about $300,000 a year, and now it's $500,000 in the hole," he says. The tension is exacting a toll. "There's a disconnect there somewhere," Bunn says, tapping his head. "My highs are real high and my lows are real low. It's like a light switch, my mind." Hoping that other soldiers will seek help, he's open...
When he left for the war, Bunn gave an enthusiastic speech to Bradford's sixth-graders about the duty of "citizen soldiers" to help Iraq's "nation building." No one realized how much the mayor had changed until April, when several hundred people gathered downtown to dedicate a patriotic wall, dreamed up by the soldiers' wives and families to honor all the townsfolk who had served in battle from World War I to Afghanistan and Iraq. The list started with 25 names and grew to 400. Bunn, not yet officially released from active duty but out on a pass from...