Broken Arrow Mother Learns Son Stationed At Ft. Hood Is Safe

By Emory Bryan, The News On 6

BROKEN ARROW, OK -- As word of the Ft. Hood shooting spread, the Broken Arrow chapter of the Blue Star Mothers reached out to one of their own with a son at Fort Hood.

Genie Tate spent much of Thursday afternoon worrying about her son. Late Thursday afternoon she was relieved to find out he's okay.

"He could hear stuff, but as soon as they heard, they were locked down," said Genie Tate, the mother of a Ft. Hood serviceman.

Tate's son is stationed at Fort Hood and for a while after the shooting on Thursday, she couldn't reach him.

Back at Christmas 2006, she was at Tulsa International Airport waiting for her son to come home on leave. He had just finished his first tour in Iraq.

"It's just a whole lot better than last year, it's hard to put into words how glad I am to be home," Sgt. Matt Tate, U.S. Army, told The News On 6 in December, 2006.

Sergeant Tate, to the relief of his mother, returned safely this summer from his second deployment. He was at Fort Hood, not far from the shooting, but wasn't hurt.

"I guess maybe we didn't know everything going on in Iraq, and then the stuff being local and they had no control over it, they had no weapons or anything they could do.  It's just sad that something here in the U.S. could be this bad," Genie Tate said.

At Fort Hood, Tate works on the electrical systems of Apache helicopters. After the shooting, his mother here, and his wife in Texas, had some anxious moments as they listened to the news.

"And he finally was able to get thru and called and talked to her for less than a minute, but he's doing great, he and all the guys in his aviation unit," his mother said.