The subject of General Bailey -- a subject that can frequently reduce Shuffield to tears -- comes up, and Shuffield's mother speaks. "That man was a friend of ours. He couldn't say enough good things about Lynna Kay. And for him to turn like this...." She shakes her head sadly. "It just doesn't make sense."
Perhaps it does make sense, though, when you consider that until Shuffield began putting up a fight, the State Guard's highest-ranking officers basically had free rein over a military fiefdom whose very unimportance has guaranteed it freedom from oversight. In the adjutant general's office, the State Guard plays stepchild to the National Guard. When the office came up for sunset legislation in 1997, a section was added regulating the handling of complaints -- but the section only applied to the National Guard, whose members are paid. Other state agencies, such as the Texas Human Rights Commission, don't have jurisdiction over the State Guard because it is an all-volunteer force. And the State Guard's commander-in-chief, Governor George W. Bush, apparently has better things to do with his time than act as a court of last resort.
"I've been particularly disappointed with the governor," says Representative Kevin Bailey. "To me, there's been a complete lack of leadership on his part." Because of Shuffield, Bailey is watching to see whether the Guard is going to give more than lip service to complaints. When the next legislative session starts, he says, "There'll be no excuses."
Since Shuffield's saga began, the State Guard has received a new executive director, Col. Ray Peters, and commanding general, Bertus Sisco. Many members say those officers are taking steps in the right direction -- they have already written a new procedure for complaints and are computerizing the Guard's membership data. Sisco has appointed a board to review all officers; it's believed that many have not met the Guard's requirements for their ranks.
But others question whether the housecleaning will go far enough. The adjutant general's office proudly touts its new complaint hotline, for example, but self-investigation is still the rule: Executive director Peters says that if a call deals with the State Guard, the hotline simply refers it to him.
Today at the Clayton Library, Shuffield has more documentation to give the Press -- a thick sheaf of sign-in sheets that prove how many hours she worked at headquarters. With the sign-in sheets, Shuffield includes an article from a small-town paper touting her next genealogy project -- war casualties from Milam County, from World War I through Vietnam.
The article is a wisp of newsprint, easily lost amid the towering stacks of Guard-related papers Shuffield has already provided. Still, she's particularly proud of it, noting that she received about 35 calls from families in Milam County. She wants people to know that something positive is going on in her life. That she has moved on. That she has "more things going for her than the State Guard."
But any tidbit of news about her war with the Guard still makes Shuffield's heart pound. She still plots and strategizes and constructs in her own defense detailed arguments that may never be heard. Shuffield may have moved on, but at least part of her is still waiting, two years after her initial complaint, to see if her beloved little military will ever deliver the blind justice she once believed it would.
