CORRIGANVILLE, Md. — Margie Blank remembers the phone call from Iraq sometime before Christmas. Her son, Army Spc. Joseph Darby, a reservist military police officer, was on the line, and she could tell something was wrong.
Darby, 24, would emerge later as the soldier who alerted the Army, and ultimately the world, to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad on Jan. 13.
"I could tell in his voice he was not sleeping," Blank, 45, recalls. "He said, 'I don't feel good.' And I said, 'You're not eating either, are you?' And he said, 'No, I haven't slept or ate.' "
She thought he might be in trouble. But he assured her he was not. "But let me ask you a question," he said, according to Blank. "If you knew something what would you do?"
His mother knew that whatever was bothering him was important.
"I said I would remain true to myself, because the truth sets you free. And truth triumphs over evil."
Darby thanked her, said he loved her, that his time on the phone was about up and he had to go.
Blank — who lives with a 9-year-old son, Montana, Darby's half brother, in a mobile home park here — says she doesn't know for certain what her son was concerned about.
But an Army investigation into the abuse at Abu Ghraib said it was Darby who alerted authorities. According to The New Yorker magazine, Darby turned over to military investigators a computer disk that contained photographs of abuse.
Friday, in televised testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld singled out Darby for praise, calling his actions "honorable and responsible." Blank, who lost a right eye to cancer and has poor vision out of her left eye, heard Rumsfeld.
"I was floored," she says. "This is a man (her son) who actually changed history."
Blank last heard from her son in a phone call from Iraq on Mother's Day, when she took the opportunity to praise him. "I got to say, 'I'm so, so very proud of you, and I love you with all my heart,' " she says. "I told him, 'Because of you, the Iraqi people know we're not dictators.' "
But she also fears for her son. She knows there are people, even here in the Corriganville area, who are unhappy that her son revealed the abuse to the world.
"There's a lot of people in these United States who believe what Joe did wasn't right. And why, I don't know. That makes no sense to me." Darby's wife, Bernadette, fears for her safety, Blank says. Blank herself has been approached by at least one person locally who expressed anger over what her son did. Blank would not reveal who the person was, except to say it was a friend of one of the military police reservists who is accused of abusing prisoners. Several of those accused belong to the same unit as her son, the 372nd Military Police Company, and live in the area. The first MP scheduled to stand trial at a court-martial May 18, Spc. Jeremy Sivits, is from Hyndman, Pa., about 10 miles north of here.
At the post office here, Postmaster Randy Shaner, 54, a Vietnam veteran, says that although the overwhelming response in town has been pride over Darby's actions, some are angry.
Shaner says a few people argue bitterly that Iraqis have killed Americans and that any abuse of Iraqi prisoners is therefore appropriate. Darby, they say, was wrong for revealing it.
"(It's) the typical small-minded, self-focused, eye-for-an-eye attitude: They hurt us, so we ought to do it to them," Shaner says. "That's totally wrong."
So far, the most public harm that Darby has experienced was an embarrassing report in Tuesday's New York Post. In it, a woman from Upstate New York claims that Darby proposed marriage to her and lied about having a wife.
Darby's wife, Bernadette, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Darby's mother did not appear to be aware of the report.
"I think my son's a hero," she says. "I think he remained true to himself. I'm so glad that the Iraqi people know that the United States does not allow this kind of stuff (prisoner abuse) and that we do have free speech, we do have freedom of press and we do have our fights."
In the Mother's Day phone call, Darby told Blank he was doing well, but he didn't know when he would be able to come home. "They have me under guard (for protection)," he said, according to his mother.
Blank says that when she gave birth to her oldest son, she was penniless and allowed her parents to adopt him. He carries her maiden name. She later married Dale Blank, a construction worker. Darby came to live with them in tiny Jenners, Pa., when he was 13.
Dale Blank, who suffered a job-related injury and became disabled, died several years ago. Blank lives on about $625-per-month federal relief for her own physical ailments and relies heavily on her daughter-in-law for assistance. "She's been my right arm."
It was Bernadette Darby who first told Blank in recent weeks that the abuse scandal had been brought forward by her son.
"She said, 'Do you know who gave (Army investigators) these pictures?' And I said, 'No, who?' And she said, 'Your son,' " Blank recalls. "It was just like someone gave me a shot, gave me a heart attack or something. All I could do was sit there and cry."