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Military Spouse Symposium held in Va. Beach (with video)
Filed by Melanie Woodrow, WAVY 10
Posted: June 19, 2008 05:41 PM EDT
Updated: June 26, 2008 07:40 PM EDT

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA. (WAVY.com) -- Katie D. is a newlywed who's not new to living in a military town, but is new to the military lifestyle. "I was always surrounded by it but never had a whole lot of exposure," said Katie. That's why when she heard about the Military Spouse Symposium, she decided to attend. "Being a new military wife and dealing with the hardships of the Navy I wanted all the support I could get," said Katie. The symposium, in its second year and targets spouses like Katie. Organizers say taking care of military families is crucial to recruiting and retention. "The decision to stay in or get out is really made around the kitchen table," said Sue Hoppin, Deputy Director for Spouse Outreach, Military Officers Association of America. Ideas generated by military spouses here at the forum are then brought to policymakers in the beltway. "There's no way that we can possibly know what their perceived gap in services and legislation are unless we sit down and talk to them," said Hoppin. "Pretty much what I've heard today is that one person with a voice can make a difference," said Katie. Like Tanya Biank, the Author of Army Wives, now a popular series. Biank, an Army wife, brat and reporter, wrote the book following her coverage of the 2002 Fort Bragg Murders. Her reports led to a congressional review. "I would tell military spouses that their opinion counts," said Biank. Katie says tuition breaks for the Navy is what matters most to her and her husband. After today, she's feeling inspired "I'll probably bring it up at the wives meeting and see if we can do something as a joint group," said Katie.

Spouses on Set: "Army Wives" - MOAA.org (video tour of Lifetime set)
May 2008

Take a behind-the-scenes tour of the Lifetime network's hit TV show alongside the MOAA President's Currently Serving Spouse Advisory Council. Watch the spouses share their experiences as military wives with the cast and producers of the show, and catch an exclusive interview with Tanya Biank, author of the book Army Wives.

Military Spouse Symposium held in Va. Beach (with video)
Filed by Melanie Woodrow, WAVY 10
Posted: June 19, 2008 05:41 PM EDT
Updated: June 26, 2008 07:40 PM EDT

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA. (WAVY.com) -- Katie D. is a newlywed who's not new to living in a military town, but is new to the military lifestyle. "I was always surrounded by it but never had a whole lot of exposure," said Katie. That's why when she heard about the Military Spouse Symposium, she decided to attend. "Being a new military wife and dealing with the hardships of the Navy I wanted all the support I could get," said Katie. The symposium, in its second year and targets spouses like Katie. Organizers say taking care of military families is crucial to recruiting and retention. "The decision to stay in or get out is really made around the kitchen table," said Sue Hoppin, Deputy Director for Spouse Outreach, Military Officers Association of America. Ideas generated by military spouses here at the forum are then brought to policymakers in the beltway. "There's no way that we can possibly know what their perceived gap in services and legislation are unless we sit down and talk to them," said Hoppin. "Pretty much what I've heard today is that one person with a voice can make a difference," said Katie. Like Tanya Biank, the Author of Army Wives, now a popular series. Biank, an Army wife, brat and reporter, wrote the book following her coverage of the 2002 Fort Bragg Murders. Her reports led to a congressional review. "I would tell military spouses that their opinion counts," said Biank. Katie says tuition breaks for the Navy is what matters most to her and her husband. After today, she's feeling inspired "I'll probably bring it up at the wives meeting and see if we can do something as a joint group," said Katie.

Lifetime brings 'Army Wives' to Walter Reed
By Bernard S. Little, Army.mil (Bernard Little is editor of the Stripe newspaper at Walter Reed)
Wednesday, July 2, 2008

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, July 2, 2008) -- Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the USO of Metropolitan Washington rolled out the red carpet Tuesday for wounded warriors, real Army wives and the cast and crew of Lifetime channel's "Army Wives" for an exclusive screening of the drama series.

The event was held in the old Red Cross building at Walter Reed.

The show, which airs Sundays at 10 p.m., with encores on Mondays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 11 p.m., follows the lives of four Army wives, their Families and an "Army husband" whose wife is in the Army. The show is based on the non-fiction book "Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage" by Tanya Biank.

Col. Bruce Haselden, garrison commander at Walter Reed, praised "Army Wives" for showing how Families are impacted by the service of their loved ones to the nation.

"[It shows] that servicemembers have Families who are concerned about them whether they are deployed or at home," Haselden said.

He added that last year, the Army rededicated itself to supporting Army Families with the signings of Army Family Covenants at military installations worldwide, and a commitment to dedicate more resources to Family programs.

Haselden said each Army Family brings "unique strength, courage and character" to their communities.

Sheila Casey, who attended the event with her husband Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey, said she's been an Army spouse for almost 38 years. She explained her awareness of the accumulative effects of repeated deployments on military Families.

"As George and I travel around talking to Army Families and Soldiers, we are amazed by their resilience and courage," she said.

"Our greatest resource are those relationships we have with other military spouses," she added.

"From week to week, 'Army Wives' works to show the Army community as a Family, and that we look out for each other during those hard times," she said. "We rely on each other, and we support each other. We appreciate and respect the times that we spend together. We appreciate the efforts of Lifetime for resonating the message that the Army Family is strong."

Lee Woodruff, the wife of ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff, also attended the event. On Jan. 29, 2006, Bob Woodruff and Canadian cameraman Doug Vogt were seriously injured in an explosion from an improvised explosive device near Taji, Iraq, about 12 miles north of Baghdad. Woodruff was treated for a traumatic brain injury at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. He was kept in a medically-induced coma for several weeks to assist his recovery.

Lee Woodruff, referred to herself as an "honorary Army wife." "I have a husband who for 10 years, covered wars," she said.

"I have a husband who believes that as long as there are American servicemembers willing to put themselves in harm's way, there needs to be journalists there to tell that side of the story. I'm an Army wife because I know what it feels like to send your husband off to war, pretend that it's just another day, and to wait for that phone call that you pray will never come.

"I got that phone call in 2003 when my best friend Melanie Bloom's husband David, [the NBC correspondent], died in Iraq, and I got that phone call Jan. 29, 2006," she said.

Lee Woodruff said as she sat by her husband's bed during his recovery, she met so many other military wives and Families enduring what she was facing.

"You are my heroes - all of you," she said. "I didn't know a lot about the military before Bob got injured, but I do know a lot about what you go through."

She said those who are injured serving this nation "deserve the respect, dignity and greatest level of care and treatment this country can provide."

Brigid Brannagh, who portrays Pamela Moran on "Army Wives," called it an honor to be at Walter Reed. She said since the show began last year, the cast has had the opportunity to meet many Army Families. She called being at Walter Reed "amazing," as her emotions surfaced and she began to weep. She called WRAMC, its patients and staff "magical."

"I'm impressed in such a profound way," Brannagh said. "I can't believe what you do here. I'm grateful to all of you."

Sally Pressman, who portrays Roxy LeBlanc on "Army Wives," echoed those sentiments: "I'm overwhelmed. I can't find the words to express what we feel for every single one of you," Pressman said to the Walter Reed community. "You guys have changed my life. I'm so grateful."

The War at Home
By James Poniewozik, Time Magazine
Thursday, Jul. 12, 2007

Lifetime may be your one-stop network when it comes to women-in-peril movies and Golden Girls reruns, but it's not the first media outlet that comes to mind when you think of geopolitics. So it's a bit surprising that the first hit drama to regularly deal with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is not 24 (which pits Jack Bauer against our mortal enemies in ... China) or The Unit (which has its special forces spending most of their time in such not-as-hot spots as ex-Soviet Georgia) but Army Wives.

Granted, Lifetime's highest-rated series ever, which takes place on a Stateside base, never sets a dusty foot in the combat zone. It's a guilty pleasure first, soapy and clichéd; there's rarely an emotional moment without a big-eyed kid or a Jude Johnstone ballad to cue the waterworks. There are affairs, alcoholism and girl-talk sessions in which the characters chat about nicknaming their "lady parts" ("my fine china," for instance).

But the show is also stark and up front about the cost of years of war--starker, in a way, because the focus is on the families left behind. Pamela (Brigid Brannagh)--whose husband is about to ship off for duty--becomes a surrogate mother to keep the family afloat (a reminder of how stretched military families often are). Roland (Sterling K. Brown) deals with his returned-vet wife's drinking and post-traumatic stress disorder. Denise (Catherine Bell) waits anxiously after her husband's Blackhawk crashes in Iraq. Only one spouse goes to war, the show says, but the whole family goes under siege.

The big important show of the Iraq era was supposed to be Steven Bochco's 2005 war drama Over There on FX, but it quickly faded. The analysis was that it was too risky to dramatize a war in which people were still dying. Yet when Army Wives ran up the flagpole, nearly 4 million viewers a week saluted. Why? It's studiously apolitical--"Their battle goes beyond politics, beyond religion, race or gender," a wife says about soldiers now at war--but so was Over There. It's soapy, but Over There was too, with affairs and home-base family dramas along with the IED blasts.

Army Wives, created by Katherine Fugate, may be more effective precisely because it's a domestic drama on the network "for women"--the same reason, perhaps, that it hasn't been taken seriously enough to be controversial. There is something a little obvious--a little male, maybe--about assuming that telling truths about war has to mean showing battle. Combat is so foreign to many viewers, however, that it can actually distance the audience.

But strained marriages, difficulty with kids and constant worry--that people can understand. On this show, war is more than fighting. It's separation and alienation. It's buying kids' shirts in bargain packs to save money. It's every exhausting problem of marriage, compounded by the fear of sudden death and of losing your home and support system along with your spouse.

Army Wives probably goes down easier because it stays out of the war zone, but its potency comes from what we know it's not showing us. When a private's stepson asks if he's going to Iraq "to kill the bad guys," he answers, "No, to help the good guys." Corny? Sure. But what goes unstated--that we know the distinctions between good and bad guys are often fatally unreadable--makes the scene stronger. We're conditioned to believe that dying in battle equals Serious Drama; Army Wives argues that saying goodbye to a child is just as much so.

In the end, the important difference between Over There and Army Wives may simply be two years and about 2,000 soldiers' lives. Civilians may never really know what it's like over there; a TV drama may never really be able to teach them. But going into the fifth year of Iraq, they're ready to respond to what Army Wives says: that war is something that also goes on Over Here.

Watching Army Wives Watching 'Army Wives'
FELICIA R. LEE; The New York Times
Published: June 28, 2007

FORT DRUM, N.Y. – Poor Denise Sherwood. Her nasty son smacks her around. And she just learned that the Blackhawk helicopter carrying her husband, Maj. Frank Sherwood, was shot down in Iraq. So maybe the real Army wives at a post near Syracuse, N.Y., watching Denise on TV in the hit Lifetime drama, “Army Wives,” would show her some love or at least cut her some slack?
Nah.

“Nobody answers the telephone that way,” one of them commented when Denise breathlessly picked up the receiver and said, “This is Major Sherwood’s wife.”

The eight women gathered at Fort Drum to watch the fourth episode of the new one-hour series said that identifying yourself by your husband’s rank would be like announcing his income, a definite no-no on the post.

Also strictly Hollywood, they agreed, was the scene of casually chic wives gathered at the Sherwood home, proffering sympathy and elegant home-baked goodies after the bad news. “We would just throw on some jeans and grab a bag of something,” said Amanda Downey, one of the real Army wives. “There are too many people in her house, too. Usually just the close friends show up.”

Despite their critique of the show, the real Army wives are among an average of 3.6 million people who have made “Army Wives” the highest-rated series in Lifetime’s 23-year history. Shown at 10 p.m. Sundays, the 13-episode series, which began June 3, is shot in Charleston, S.C., at a fictional post called Fort Marshall and is based on the book “Army Wives: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage” by Tanya Biank, herself an Army brat turned Army wife. Biank is a consultant to the show.

Still, the real Army wives said, the plots often feel more likely to play out on Wisteria Lane (“Desperate Housewives” on ABC) than at this 107,000-acre post in upstate New York, which is home to 17,000 soldiers and their families (another 14,000 people) and has about 3,500 troops in Iraq. The first episode ended with the Army wife and ex-cop Pamela Moran (Brigid Brannagh) giving birth on a pool table in a bar and admits – she is white and the twin babies are black – that she is a surrogate.

The ensemble includes Roxy LeBlanc (Sally Pressman), a bartender and former single mom (of two boys by different men) who married her husband, a private, after knowing him four days; Claudia Joy Holden (Kim Delaney), the ambitious Harvard Law-educated wife of a colonel; and Denise (Catherine Bell), of the unfortunate phone manner.

Injecting some spousal testosterone is Roland Burton (Sterling K. Brown), a psychiatrist married to Lt. Col. Joan Burton (Wendy Davis), who had just returned from a rough tour in Afghanistan. One of her soldiers has post-traumatic stress disorder and ends up taking Roland and Claudia Joy hostage.

Among other things, the Fort Drum wives labeled the depiction of the hostage-taking sergeant as “over the top,” dismissed as untrue Denise’s complaint that she would be kicked off the post after six months if her husband was dead (“not anymore”) and thought a scene of returning soldiers, in an earlier episode, should have been far more joyous.

But despite their concerns about authenticity and the program’s propensity for sudsy dramatic license, this group mostly found “Army Wives” entertaining, well acted and able to shed some light on their real lives.

“People don’t understand what our lives are like,” said Michelle McNeill, 36, the mother of four and the wife of Charles, who has been in the military for 20 years. “I guess that’s why we want this show to get it right. We take this so personally.”

“If it gets a little out there about what Army wives go through, that’s good,” said Jemma Urquhart, a 36-year-old mother of two whose husband, Rob, had just returned from Afghanistan. “It’s entertaining,” she added. “I like the fact that it does focus on Army wives from Roxy, who’s married to a private, to Claudia Joy, whose husband is a colonel, and they’re getting along.”

The women – all mothers, most in their 30s – had gathered in the Army Community Services Ballroom, a combination conference room and den with fat sofas, to watch the show. As they repeatedly paused a DVD of the program to offer their comments, the women said over and over how proud they were of their husbands and all the troops.

Urquhart said some of the stories rang true, like Denise’s desire to go to Iraq to find her husband. “I had a friend who thought her husband was dead,” she recalled. “The first thing she did was she wanted to get on a plane.”

That authenticity is not coincidental said Katherine Fugate, the show’s creator, writer and one of the executive producers. The show used two advisers from the Army for each script. “It’s extremely important that I portray them accurately,” she said. “I have great admiration for the wives. It’s the last untold story, about how they maintain relationships and how they are single mothers much of the time. That story is why I created the series.”

Still, entertainment means bending reality said Mark Gordon, principal of the Mark Gordon Co. (which created “Grey’s Anatomy”) and another executive producer of “Army Wives.”

Gordon speculated that the program had done well in the ratings because of the war in Iraq. “Think about a film like ‘The Best Years of Our Lives,’” he said, referring to the 1946 classic. “We’re always interested in wartime in the experiences of the people left behind.”

And despite their quibbles, some of the women at Fort Drum declared themselves fans. “The plotlines were fabulous,” said Deborah Stellfox, who has two children and whose husband, Lamar, has been in the military for 26 years. “The problems were the technical aspects. Hollywood writers writing about the military is like men writing about childbirth.”

But, she said, “you notice that we keep watching, week after week. That says something.”

Pergament: Lifetime’s popular ‘Army Wives’ has a local ties
Alan Pergament, Buffalo News

One of my local spies told me the popular Lifetime Sunday series, “Army Wives,” is based on a book by a former Western New Yorker.
Lifetime recently announced that “Army Wives” is the “mostwatched series in the network’s 23-year history.

Tanya Biank, a former Heim Elementary School pupil, wrote the book upon which the series is based, “Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives.” (It’s currently in stores in paperback under the name “Army Wives.”) The show stars Kim Delaney, Catherine Bell and several other lesser-known actors.

Biank lived here from about age 7 through 11 when her father, Lt. Col. Sam Biank, was transferred to Western New York in the late 1970s to teach military science at Canisius College and head up the ROTC program.

She hasn’t been here in years, but she plans to come in October when one of her husband’s buddies is getting married in Tonawanda. Then she’ll get together with my spy, her Heim classmate Tina Pilkey.

“I am an Army brat,” explained Biank by phone from her home in Alexandria, Va. “We moved quite a bit.” Her mom went back to school and graduated from Canisius. She said her parents are big Canisius supporters and bought their first home in Buffalo. She added she gave her dad a basket of products from Buffalo for his birthday last year.

“My parents have said if it had not been for the Army they would have remained there,” said Biank. “They enjoyed it that much.”

Biank, 35, wrote the nonfiction book after covering the military for a newspaper near Fort Bragg, N.C., in 2002 when four Fort Bragg soldiers murdered their wives and an officer’s wife killed her husband.

“It happened in six weeks in one summer in one Army town,” said Biank. After covering the story, she was approached about writing a book.

“I didn’t really want it to focus on the murders,” she explained. “We already had this tragedy here and I thought it would be equally tragic that the public might have a skewed perception of military life based on just the murders. There was more to military life and military community than these murders. That was really the story I wanted to tell. I didn’t just want to tell a true crime book.”

Married for three years to Lt. Col. Michael Marti, an intelligence officer at the Pentagon, Biank is raising their 8-month old son, freelancing for five military publications and blogging every Monday on the Lifetime series.

“It is kind of funny. When I wrote the book, I wasn’t an Army wife,” she explained. “It is an example of life imitating art for me. I met my husband the same week that I decided to do the book.”

Of course, she understood military life very well since her father served for 30 years and she has an older sister, Maria, who is a lieutenant colonel in the Army. Biank is a military consultant on the show, which is setting records for Lifetime.

“I answer any questions the producers or writers might have or the wardrobe people,” she explained. “Sometimes I’m asked about dialogue, protocol, the military acronyms.”

The book is a nonfiction narrative, one reason that Biank never thought that it would become a fictional TV series. A Hollywood film agent got his hands on the book proposal and thought it had the potential for movie, miniseries or TV show before the book was written.

“People who have read the book will recognize the characters,” she said. “But the book is non-fiction, the show is fiction. I can definitely see my real-life characters in these fictional characters. But things were changed also. It’s a drama.”

Of course, some of the soap opera elements in the script have been criticized as unrealistic. In one plot line that some chat room participants have found unreal, an Army wife became a surrogate mother to earn money for her financiallystrapped family.

“It’s been embellished on the show, but that is in the book,” said Biank. “That is actually something that did [happen].”

Similarly, a plot line in which a teenager beats up his mother (Bell’s character) is taken from real life. “Again things are exaggerated,” said Biank. “But yeah, it happened.”

There were dramatic inventions. A plot line in which a female officer’s marriage is threatened because she is suffering from post-traumatic stress isn’t in the book.

“I think it is a nice addition to have a male spouse whose wife is the one serving because that is realistic,” said Biank. She adds a female character who plots to get her husband a top job also is a contrivance.

“At the same time, my book does cover the politics, the gossip. Things that can go on not only in Army wife circles, but in any office. Even any church group has that element of backstabbing and gossip. In the show, those are some of the funny elements. But I bet they probably strike close to home for some people watching.”

Overall, Biank believes the show captures the spirit of the book.

“I think they’ve done a really good job,” said Biank. “I don’t look at my book as entertainment. And the show is definitely entertainment. It is not a docudrama of Army life. It is not a reality TV show about Army life. It is drama. At the same point, while the show is fiction, it deals with some real things from Army life. Disappointment, the separation, the danger, raising children in the military and living in an environment where you are in a constant state of readiness for war. How does this all relate to being a spouse?”

The series is timely because so many husbands and wives are dealing with similar things as their spouses serve in the Iraq war.

“There is a lot [of interest] because of the timeliness factor,” agreed Biank. “But even if we weren’t in a war, our service members are still serving and they’re still going to places like Bosnia or Korea or the Middle East. They are still going to dangerous places.”

Five Things You Didn't Know About TV's Red-hot Army Wives
by Ileane Rudolph, TVGuide.com

Army Wives
Lifetime's Army Wives (Sundays at 10 pm/ET) doesn't take a stance onthe war, but it's still making a big noise. Since its June 3debut, the soap has smashed the female-friendly network'sratings records with almost four million viewers a week.It doesn't hurt that the show stars popular TV veteransKim Delaney (NYPDBlue) and Catherine Bell(JAG) and that it's lustier than Lifetime's usual fare.But Army Wives also seems tobe striking a chord with its depiction of military familylife — a world full of rituals, duties and sacrifices unknownto most of America. "People keep coming up to me sayingit's about time we see the female perspective on war,"explains executive producer Katherine Fugate. "We have rarely ever stayed at home with the wives when their husbands are deployed."
Here's our briefing on why the show hit home:

1) A book about real-life military spouses inspired the series. The source was journalistand army brat Tanya Biank's popular 2006 nonfiction bookUnder the Sabers: The UnwrittenCode of Army Wives. (It's been retitled Army Wives for the new paperback edition; buy it at Amazon.com) "I wrote the book because I wanted to humanize our military and military families," says Biank, now the wife of a lieutenant colonel and a show consultant. Most of Army Wives' characters are based on the book's actual subjects. "When I was doing a radio interviewrecently, I got a call from the real Roxy," says Sally Pressman, who plays irrepressible newlywed Roxy LeBlanc. "She said that she was crying hysterically watching the first episode because it was so moving to see her life on the screen. We're not enhancing things at all."

2) Producer Katherine Fugate thought she was turning the book into a movie — and even had a dream cast lined up. When Mark Gordon — whoalso produces Grey's Anatomy — came to Fugate withthe book, she thought she was adapting it for the bigscreen. "I was looking for a project for Reese Witherspoonand thought she'd be great as Roxy," recalls Fugate. "I even met with Sandra Bullock, who I wasthinking of to play Denise. No one had bothered to tellme it was for a television series!" Once she found out,Fugate started handpicking her TV cast. "I basically seducedKim Delaney and Catherine Bell into doing it." How? "By mapping out the entire season's plotlines." (Read on for scoop.... )

3) There are no catfights on this army post! "No one has to be declawed — the women get along great,"says Sterling K. Brown, who plays the civilian husband ofLt. Col. Joan Burton (Wendy Davis) and the only male "wife." Adds Bell, whose last series was the testosterone-heavy JAG, "It's so nice to have girlfriends on set. We all hang out together on weekends. There's a lot of joking, too. The biggest joke is about having sex with each other. We've done these fake blooper reels where one of us pops up in the bed of another couple. It's 'Desperate Army Housewives.'"

4) The in-your-face sex may be new to Lifetime, but it's true to military life. "There are more affairs that happen in this setting thannormal because of the longabsences," Fugate says. "There are Internet affairs,emotional affairs and physicalaffairs." Later this summer one of the main characters will succumb "because they're lonely,"teases Fugate. But most of the on-screen coupling is themarried kind. "All of our characters have had pretty steamy lovescenes with their spouses," says Bell, whose repressed and buttoned-downDenise will get a makeover and "start to assert herselfsexually." Pressman says that when she first read the scriptshe thought the show was for HBO. "It was soreal and gritty, and right awaythere was a scene with Roxy ironing in her underwear!"

5) Real-life army wives love Army Wives — mostly. "I was recently told by a military couple that they love thelife," says Delaney, who playsqueen bee ClaudiaJoy Holden. "That's what I hope we getacross: the passion they have for the military, for Americaand for each other." So far the series is getting plenty of saluteson various websites devoted to military families. "Army Wives is important because it shows the bonds between women," reads one entry. One dissatisfied blogger does sniff, "We real army spouses are not desperate housewives!" But Lori Twichell, the real-life wife of an Air Force sergeant, says, "Those women on Wisteria Lane have no idea how desperate our lives can be. I hope we'll see these TV wives overcome the kinds of adversity many of us have had to."

Not to worry: there are plenty of triumphs coming up. Joan finally seeks treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder, Denise returns to nursing despite her husband's objections, and the reason behind Claudia Joy's decision to drop out of Harvard Law School is revealed as she deals with her daughter's relationship with Denise's abusive son. Looks like all is fair in love and war.

The unwritten code
By Amneris Solano, Staff writer, Fayetteville Observer
Originally published on Sunday, May 27, 2007 in the Life category.

A new TV series on Lifetime chronicles the lives and support system of Army wives.

On a fictional Army post in Charleston, S.C., author Tanya Biank’s account of the unwritten code of Army wives is coming to life.

Her nonfiction book, “Army Wives,” is the inspiration for a Lifetime TV series of the same name. The show, which stars Kim Delaney and Catherine Bell, premieres June 3 at 10 p.m.

“I never thought about the book actually becoming a show,” Biank said during a phone interview last week from her home in Washington, D.C. “I just wrote the book because I love writing about the military so that was my focus and getting published was really my dream. Having the show on top of that, I’m not sure that it’s soaked in.”

Biank, a former Fayetteville Observer military reporter, profiles four Army wives, their husbands and their lives in the military in her nonfiction narrative. The book tells the story of Fayetteville and Fort Bragg as it sheds light on the summer of 2002 when four soldiers and one Army wife murdered their spouses.

Biank covered the high-profile murders for the Observer. The cases, which drew national attention, helped change the military’s policies on domestic violence.

Producer Mark Gordon, who launched the popular ABC drama “Grey’s Anatomy,” got hold of Biank’s book and commissioned it as a TV show. The ensemble drama has turned Biank’s real-world stories into a fictional depiction of military life.

“Does it feel like it’s the book?” Biank asked. “Pieces of it do. But the show has really taken on a life of its own and you have to remember it’s an hour-long drama that is going to be on week after week so it can’t follow a book exactly. It’s a totally different format. It’s a different genre.”

The television show doesn’t deal with the murders. Instead it follows a diverse group of military wives and one husband living on a fictional Army post. Thirteen episodes are being shot on a closed naval base in South Carolina.

“Army Wives” creator Katherine Fugate said the show retains the spirit of Biank’s book. It shares some of the same themes as it explores the struggles, dreams and friendships of Army spouses.

“I took the basis of her characters and created a fictional world for them,” Fugate said during a phone interview from Los Angeles. “We’re really hammering home the sense of camaraderie and support system that they (Army wives) give each other ’cause I think a lot of shows don’t hit that as well as they could.”

Fugate, who wrote the movie “The Prince & Me,” starring Julia Stiles, said she was intrigued by Biank’s book the moment she read it. “I read the whole thing,” she said. “Loved the book. The richness in the characters and it’s a world I had never been in ’cause I’m not from the military. I was fascinated by how it has its own structure and its own social constraints.”

That world is depicted in the television series. Biank, who is married to an Army lieutenant colonel, served as a consultant on the show to ensure that the military is shown as accurately as possible. She reads the show’s scripts for errors and answers questions about uniforms, protocols, ranks and military acronyms.

“It’s very difficult to recreate a military culture,” Biank said, “if you don’t come from that world. There’s a learning curve there. And I think they’ve done a good job with that interpretation. I’ve really been impressed with how they’ve wanted to get those details right.”

Portraying an army wife
Biank watched a pilot of the show and said she is looking forward to seeing it through. She was nervous at first, she said, that she might not like it.

“My name and my work is associated with this,” she said, “and I was just worried because sometimes how the military is depicted on TV shows or in movies is not always accurate or can be laughable. ... Not only did I breathe a sigh of relief once I watched it but I really enjoyed it.”

The show’s focus is on the bond the spouses form through their love of a soldier. Sally Pressman, who plays Roxy LeBlanc, said she was immediately drawn to the part.

Her character is a sassy young mother who marries a soldier she has known for only four days. Pressman describes her like this: “She’s from Alabama, had a bad childhood, an alcoholic mother, no father and has just been fighting her whole life to extricate herself from that kind of life.

“She’s really the most amazing character that I’ve ever read ’cause she’s so fully developed,” Pressman said during a phone interview from South Carolina. “There are so many sides to her. She’s rough around the edges. She’s tough because of the life that she’s had but at the same time she’s really just got such a great heart.”

“Army Wives” could launch Pressman, a newcomer, into stardom. She has done a movie, “The Dread,” but this is her biggest project to date. Being a part of a Lifetime original series, she said, has been a big thrill.

The show is relevant to today’s society, Pressman said, and she hope’s it shows a more personal side of military life. She especially wanted her portrayal of an Army wife, she said, to do justice to the real people who live it every day.

“I really hope that it’s really received as an homage to them,” Pressman said. “We are trying to do everything in our power to represent them in a wonderful way.”

Pressman and the other actors met a group of Army wives from Fort Bragg, Arizona and Kansas City during an Operation Homefront event in Charleston. The wives of deployed soldiers and their children were treated to a day of pampering earlier this month.

Meeting the wives, Pressman said, was a real treat. She respects and admires them, she said, for all they do.

“I think it’s just the sheer strength of these women,” she said. “I think in this day and age it’s the idea of the superwoman — the woman who has a job, has a family, has a child and juggles all of them. The new superwoman is the Army wife.”

Star treatment
Some of those who went on the trip said they were impressed by the actors. They were happy, the wives said, that the actors wanted to know about their lives.

“They treated us like we were the stars,” said Leslie Wilder, an Army wife who lives in Stedman. “They were asking us questions and it made me feel good that there are people out there that really want to hear our story.”

Her husband, Sgt. First Class Danny Wilder, is stationed in Africa. He was home from a deployment for only a few months before he was sent away again.

“I think this show coming out at this time is going to be perfect,” Wilder said. “It’s going to show people what we really go through.”

Before going to Charleston for the day, Heather Fredenburg said she had some reservations about the show. She saw a preview for the show on Lifetime.

“I was a bit turned off about it,” she said. “I was a little bit nervous as how they are going to portray the wives.”

Fredenburg, who lives in Hope Mills, has been married to her husband, Staff Sgt. Anthony Fredenburg, for seven years. The couple have three children. Fredenburg is home with the children while her husband is serving in Afghanistan.

She hopes the series will show how supportive Army wives are of each other and how they help one another out when their husbands are away.

“People just assume how Army wives are,” she said. “Unless you know an Army spouse, you don’t know how we are. It’s a sisterhood — you’re bonded.”

Jennifer Spare, whose husband, Staff Sgt. James Spare, is stationed in Iraq, said sometimes Army wives are portrayed in a bad light. They are often stereotyped as needy or cheaters. While some of that might go on that isn’t the norm. The wives feared the show would play into that but after meeting the cast they feel reassured.

“I felt more comfortable when I found it was based on a book and actually based on real people,” Spare said. She is excited to see the show, she said, and hopes it will give people an insight into Army life.

A show about love
Fugate, the show’s creator, said the goal is make the show as realistic as possible with some artistic license. Essentially, the show is about love and relationships. She compares it to the 1980s show “Thirtysomething” that delved deep into married life.

“Army Wives,” she said, is different than most shows now on TV because it’s topical and it shows a side of Army life most people don’t get to see. “I think that’s why we’re on air now actually,” she said. “It’s a very topical subject. It humanizes what people are doing.”

The show does not take a political stance. It’s about the people, she said, not whether the war is right or wrong.

“Besides being good entertainment,” Fugate said, “for me personally it’s for people to have a better understanding of what the wives go through in these marriages. It is important for me that it’s not about a war or a particular president or a particular belief. We’re staying away from that and dealing with the people’s lives and what they go through. You support the soldiers. You support their choices. And you kind of divorce yourself from the politics and presidents and such.”

A few good 'Wives'
With Kim Delaney, Catherine Bell and Sally Pressman, this soap drama is surging to a Lifetime series record.

June 28, 2007
By Gail Shister, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

MEGAN TANTILLO / Lifetime Television
Roxy (Sally Pressman) blows out her birthday candles in an episode of Lifetime's "Army Wives" scheduled for July 15. Pressman, 25, a native New Yorker, was a professional ballerina with the Manhattan Ballet Company. After graduating from Yale, she moved to L.A. to pursue acting.
» More images
At ease, Kim Delaney.
After being dishonorably discharged from CSI: Miami in '02 - a year after her own show, Philly, was canceled - Roxborough's Delaney is back on active duty with a hot new show.

Thanks to Army Wives, the highest-rated series in Lifetime's 23-year history, Delaney is basking in the kind of success she hasn't enjoyed since her eight-season run on ABC's NYPD Blue ended in '03.

"You put all the effort in, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't," she says from Charleston, S.C., where Wives is filmed. "When it works on this level, it's exciting."

Based on Tanya Biank's '06 book Under the Sabres: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage, Wives revolves around a diverse group of women - and one man - living with their spouses and families on a bustling Army base.

Costars include sultry JAG alum Catherine Bell, Brigid Brannagh (CSI), and newcomer Sally Pressman, formerly a professional ballerina. Mark Gordon (Grey's Anatomy) is executive producer.

After four episodes, Wives (at 10 p.m. Sundays) averages 3.6 million total viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. That's an increase of 173 percent over the time slot's previous occupant, Blood Ties.

Delaney, 47, plays matriarch Claudia Joy Holden, no-nonsense wife of Col. Michael Holden (Brian McNamara). Widely respected on the base, she is the show's moral center.

"There's a fine line between her morals and the Army's," Delaney says. "She stays steady, no matter what happens. I think I need my own Claudia Joy Holden."

No joke.

In '02, Delaney was arrested for DUI. Three years later, she lost custody of her only child, Jack, now 17, after he testified in a Santa Monica, Calif., court that her drinking endangered his life.

Also in '05, her brother John died from a massive heart attack while playing basketball with the Delaney clan at their parents' home in Ventnor, N.J. He was 47.

It seems that the actress' luck is finally turning.

Jack, now a high school senior and captain of the varsity basketball team, has toured Penn and Villanova and recently attended a Penn basketball camp.

And on the professional front, Wives is tearing up cable. Even Delaney says she's surprised.

"I knew it was good work, but you never know what people are going to watch. Everywhere I go - the shoe store, the eye doctor - everybody's talking about it. They're already hooked. Forget about it."

Timing is a big factor. With the country at war in Iraq, Wives hits many viewers where they live. (By comparison, Steven Bochco's Over There, about a mostly male combat unit in Iraq, lasted only one season on FX in '05.)

Wives gets tons of feedback, mostly positive, on the Lifetime Web site from real Army wives, and husbands, says a network rep.

After nine seasons on JAG as tough-as-titanium lawyer Lt. "Mac" MacKenzie, Catherine Bell jumped at the role of Denise Sherwood, a devoted homemaker being physically abused by her teenage son.

"I wanted something totally different," says Bell, 38, a motorcyclist, race-car driver and kickboxer. "I always play strong, badass women. I knew this would be a challenge."

Bell had one caveat. She insisted to the producers that her character eventually wake up and defend herself.

Playing a weak woman for a movie was OK with Bell, but doing it week after week, possibly for years, would send a bad message, she says.

"To me, it's always about the message. I can't play a woman who puts up with abuse forever and never changes. Ultimately, the message is that being weak and not standing up for yourself is OK."

Roxy LeBlanc, Wives' sexy breakout character, has no such handicap. Played by Pressman, she does what she wants, when she wants. A sassy, "white trash" mother of two, she marries a soldier (Drew Fuller) after knowing him four days.

In an early episode, Roxy struts out of a bathroom stall in nothing but a thong and high heels. (Relax, she needed to clean a wine stain off her dress.)

"She's more fun than being me," says Pressman. "She's got no edge, no negativity. She just goes with the flow. She doesn't really care what people think."

Pressman, 25, a native New Yorker and a dancer since age 2, was a member of the Manhattan Ballet Company. After graduating from Yale, she moved to L.A. to pursue acting. Wives is her first series.

"When I did ballet, I'd have five performances a year," she says. "At some point, I realized it was the performance I enjoyed, not the actual ballet, so I started exploring acting."

Speaking of exploring, Lifetime is not eager for Wives' cast to disclose personal feelings about the war. Like good Army wives, Delaney and Pressman won't get into it. Bell, however, will.

"I don't understand why we're there. It's a complicated situation and I don't think there's a simple answer. I'd like to see us out of there as soon as possible.

"Bottom line, I support our troops and their families 100 percent. I think everybody does."

----------------------------------
Contact staff writer Gail Shister at 215-854-2224 or gshister@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/gailshister.
Television

Army Wives

Sundays

at 10 p.m.

on Lifetime

THE WAR BACK HOME
By PAIGE ALBINIAK, New York Post

July 1, 2007 -- It's the scenario every Army wife dreads: Denise Sherwood is happily drinking wine at her friend's home when she flips on the TV and learns that her officer husband's chopper has gone down in Iraq. Denise spends the several days waiting, worrying and watching the news.
When this plays out in the Lifetime series "Army Wives" the payoff for viewers is substantial. The show premiered in early June to 3.5 million viewers, setting an all-time record for the network. And the show's popularity has been growing ever since.

"There's just enough melodrama to make you want to know what's happening next, but there's also a lot of realism," says Catherine Bell, the actress who plays Denise. She knows a thing or two about military dramas having served nine years as Lt. Col. Sarah Mackenzie on the CBS series "Jag."

The series is based on the book "Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives" by Tanya Biank, an Army wife who covered the military as a journalist for The Fayetteville Observer. Biank's book follows the lives of four real-life Army wives at Ft. Bragg, N.C. Lifetime's version, for which Biank is a consultant (see sidebar), is set on the fictional Army post of Ft. Marshall and is shot in and around Charleston, S.C.

"Army Wives" is produced by The Mark Gordon Television Company, which also has a big hand in ABC's hospital hit, "Grey's Anatomy." Whereas Seattle Grace's dark and twisty interns are more than a little neurotic, the Army wives, who live with the very real presence of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, know how to deal with life's ups and downs.

All of the wives – Claudia Joy Holden, Pamela Moran, Roxy LeBlanc and Denise – know they could become widows at any time. Something is always at stake and viewers seem drawn by the show's mix of truth and fiction.

There's also one Army husband in the crowd, civilian psychiatrist Roland Burton (Sterling K. Brown). He's getting reacquainted with his wife, Lt. Col. Joan Burton (Wendy Davis) who's struggling at home after spending two harrowing years in Afghanistan.

"I don't necessarily find myself drawn to things because of their topicality, but this story is interesting because of what is really going on in the world," says Gordon. "Although this story takes place now, it could have taken place during World War II or Vietnam or any other time our country has been at war."

Bell is one of the ensemble cast's most familiar faces. As Denise, she shares a romantic marriage with her husband, Major Frank Sherwood (Terry Serpico), but has a difficult relationship with her son, Jeremy (Richard Bryant). Bell initially resisted taking on another show set in the military, but was won over by the show's pilot script.

"Denise very different from any character I've ever played and that was very appealing to me," says Bell. "She's going to change a lot over the season. She realizes this is not how she wants to live her life anymore."

Kim Delaney -- another actress from, as Bell puts it, a "boy's club" show, "NYPD Blue," plays Claudia Joy Holden, wife of the fictional Ft. Marshall's third-ranking officer, Col. Michael James Holden (Brian McNamara). With her strong sense of self, Claudia Joy is the group's leader, while Denise is its maternal heart.

Denise and Claudia Joy are already best friends when the show opens, but they bond with Pamela (Brigid Brannagh), Roxy (Sally Pressman) and Roland when all five are forced to help Pamela, who is carrying twins as a secret surrogate mother. That situation teaches them that they've got each other's backs.

"Once you marry a soldier, you are marrying a culture," says Deborah Spera, an executive producer on the show and president of The Mark Gordon Television Company. "When they send their spouses off to work, it's not like us sending our spouses on a business trip. They are a different breed."

ARMY WIVES

Sunday, 10 p.m., Lifetime

SIDEBAR:
HED: Army brat becomes 'wife'

DEK: Author says show is the real thing

Four wives (and one husband), virtual strangers, become best friends in an afternoon. When asked if she believes Episode 1 of 'Army Wives' resembles reality, Tanya Biank, whose book "Army Wives: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage," is the series' basis, doesn't hesitate: "Army spouses are a hardy and transient population. To get along, you have to connect – and sharing deep emotional experiences makes that happen fast. Any viewer who ever went to camp can relate to the characters bonding."

To help viewers who went to camp but not into the military, there's an "Army Lingo" page on Lifetime's "Army Wives" Web site. Biank explains its usefulness: "In the military, you can't typecast people based on their husband's rank anymore. The Army is beginning to embrace that idea, and that's where the FRGs come from."

FRGs? What's that?

Turn to the Web page (http://www.lifetimetv.com/shows/armywives/index.php) and you'll learn that "FRG" means "Family Readiness Group:" "An organization of soldiers and family members in the same unit who provide mutual support, assistance and a network of communication among members and the chain of command… "

In fewer words: this made-for-TV drama has a firm basis in reality. Biank grew up as an "Army brat" and is now an Army wife (her husband Michael is a lieutenant colonel stationed at The Pentagon). Why does Biank think this insider-y series is a hit? "The people confined to this fishbowl lifestyle we call the military come from very diverse places and backgrounds – and so do viewers."

--Bethanne Kelly Patrick

"Army Wives"' premiere a ratings hit
Lifetime preparing two more scripted series
By IAN MOHR

"Army Wives" conquered the Nielsen ratings on Sunday, scoring 3.5-million viewers and becoming the most-watched series premiere in Lifetime's 23-year history.
Susanne Daniels, president of entertainment for Lifetime, said the huge audience for "Army Wives" represents a solid beginning to the network's strategy of creating a return to Lifetime's powerhouse Sunday-night lineup of scripted original series a few years ago, which featured "The Division" and "Strong Medicine."

On July 15, when "Army Wives" is well into its initial 13-episode run, Lifetime will premiere two more scripted series: "Side Order of Life," starring Marisa cq Coughlan cq as a young magazine photographer re-evaluating her life, and "State of Mind," with Lily Taylor as a family therapist plagued by her own problems. The shows will run in a three-hour primetime block, starting at 8.

"My mandate is to bring down the median age of Lifetime," said Daniels, referring to the network's older skew, which has hurt it in getting the biggest bucks from Madison Avenue.

With "Army Wives," Lifetime scored its highest time-period rating since January 2004, and its highest women-18-to-34 viewership in the timeslot since May 2002.

As an indication of the buzz surrounding the show, video streaming of the "Army Wives" episode on LifetimeTV.com soared by 94% from Sunday to Monday.

Daniels gave special commendation to the executive producers of the series: Mark Gordon, Deb Spera cq, Katherine Fugate cq, and Jeff Melvoin cq. Fugate is also the creator and one of the writers, and Melvoin is the show runner. And in getting the word out about "Army Wives," Daniels cited the marketing experts Bob Bibb and Lew Goldstein, who were co-presidents of marketing for the WB.

Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117966293.html

"Army Wives" reports for duty Sunday
Lifetime hopes its new series Army Wives (Sunday, 10 ET/PT) passes muster.
by: Gary Strauss, USA TODAY

Wives, based on Tanya Biank's Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives, is an ensemble drama featuring former NYPD Blue Emmy winner Kim Delaney and JAG's Catherine Bell as officers' spouses dealing with problems at home and deployments overseas.

Though the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan underlie the story lines, the series is more about the home front than the firefights that underscored cable TV's last big scripted military series, FX's Over There.

Wives "is an area that's not been well explored, and it deals with the spouses and how they're coping with loved ones being overseas or going overseas in a very real, very emotional way," says executive producer Mark Gordon (Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds).

Filmed at an abandoned military post in Charleston, S.C., Army Wives "is a melodrama in the best sense of the word," Gordon says. Sunday's premiere has several intertwining stories — back-biting spouses, post-traumatic stress syndrome and the birth of twins atop a dive-bar pool table. At the epicenter is Delaney's Joy Holden, Harvard Law-educated and a colonel's wife, navigating military and home life.

"The problems military people have are universal," Delaney says. "You have to give credit to the wives at home. It's not easy for them. You have to respect what they do every day."

Bell wasn't interested in another military show after spending nine seasons as JAG's Marine Corps. Lt. Col. Sarah MacKenzie. In fact, she was trying to develop a sitcom. But she was drawn to Army Wives because of Gordon, solid scripts and her character, a mom who is physically abused, but not by who you might think.

"The character is very interesting and different from anything I've ever played," Bell says. "It's touching, moving and poignant. And it's an ensemble cast that feels good."

Army Wives is the first of three new Sunday series aimed at attracting the women viewers who made Lifetime a cable network powerhouse in the 1990s. On July 15, Lifetime pairs Wives with Side Order of Life (8 ET/PT) and State of Mind (9 ET/PT).

Lifetime entertainment chief Susanne Daniels hopes at least one of the series shines. "It's important that between the three, we get a hit," she says. "One series can really elevate an entire cable network — look at (TNT's) The Closer or (Bravo's) Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. That's what we're looking for here."