Photo By Brittany Trumbull | Zachary Irwin, a veteran and air traffic control shift leader at Fort Rucker, holds...... read more read more
FORT RUCKER, Ala.— For one Fort Rucker retiree, writing has always been a way to express what he sometimes struggles to say out loud. However, the words he put to paper during deployments were never meant for an audience. Those were for his three daughters.
Zachary Irwin, a veteran and current air traffic control shift leader at Fort Rucker, was deployed for the first time when his oldest daughter, Emily, now an Air Force Air Traffic Controller herself, was between 1 and 2 years old. Being away from the family, with his also active-duty wife back home, made it difficult to explain the emotions that came with separation, especially to a child too young to understand why her father was gone.
So, he created a story.
“I made her a little handmade book,” Irwin said. “It was silly, but it was fun and she loved it.”
He glued pictures inside the book and sent it home to Emily, creating a small connection between father and daughter despite the distance.
When he deployed to Afghanistan, his daughter Natalie was only 2 months old. Again, he made a book, this time with a simple hand drawn character that appeared throughout the story like an alphabet book.
Then came another deployment, this time to Africa. His youngest daughter, Penelope, was between 6 and 7 years old. For her, Irwin wanted to create something different. He wrote “Penny B and the Missing Piece,” a story that carried a message he thought just might resonate beyond his own family.
“I knew it was more of a message that was a little more universal than the others right from the start,” Irwin said. The book follows Penny B as she works through the emotions of having a parent away, eventually discovering that what she thought was missing was never truly missing at all.
Irwin initially created the book using basic clip art and had a copy printed to send back home to his girls. Then his wife, Stephanie Irwin, also an Army veteran who works in air traffic control standardization for the 1-11th Aviation Regiment towers, began encouraging him to take the next step.
For five years, she told him he needed to publish it. “I nagged him for a really long time knowing that it could help other Army kids like ours,” Stephanie said. “Finally, I told him… ‘This is the year!’” Eventually, he listened.
Irwin used artificial intelligence prompts to help develop the illustrations, starting with real photographs of Penelope to help create the character. From there, the story and illustrations came together.
“It was really cool to see it come to life,” he said. “And I feel like it came out really well.”
For Penelope, now a middle school student in Enterprise, Al., seeing the book become real has brought a mixture of excitement and embarrassment.
“You can tell she’s excited, but also a little bit embarrassed, a little shy about it,” Irwin said.
But one of her earliest experiences with the book showed her father just how meaningful the story could become. During a deployment, one of Irwin’s fellow noncommissioned officers remained with rear detachment while his daughter was hospitalized receiving blood transfusions. The Soldier had mentioned how meaningful it would be if people could record themselves reading books so his daughter could watch them from the hospital. Penelope read her book.
The family sent the recording to the child, giving a little girl in a hospital room a story read by another military child who understood trials.
Years later, that memory remains part of what makes the book special.
Stephanie remembers another moment that made the story special for young Penelope.
“When Penelope first read the book,” said Stephanie, “she became especially excited that Penny’s mother gave her fruit and gluten-free snacks.
Penelope had just been diagnosed with celiac disease while her Dad was deployed.
“He came home and he could not have gluten anymore either,” Stephanie laughed. “ For many reasons, that was probably the hardest deployment for all of us.”
That separation came in 2020, during the pandemic. Zachary was away, Stephanie was managing life at home, and their children were navigating school remotely.
“It was just really really hard,” Stephanie said.
Stephanie said military families often focus on the service member who is deployed, but the parent at home carries a weight of their own.
“It’s very thoughtful that he really took the time to articulate how important whatever parent is at home, that is holding down the fort,” she said. “Those parents don’t get a lot of credit.”
For Zachary, however, writing “Penny B and the Missing Piece” was never only about giving his own, or other military families, a children’s book. It was also about processing his own emotions and reassuring himself that, even from thousands of miles away, he was still part of his daughters’ lives.
“I can hardly reread it and not be emotional about it,” he said. “Writing this was as much for me as for anybody else.” The missing piece in Penny’s, now published, story is ultimately not something that needs to be found. It is the reassurance that love, family and connection remain intact, even when someone is far away.
“For me, it was to know that everything is taken care of at home and that there is not a missing piece,” Irwin said. “And ultimately, that is what she finds out.”
| Date Taken: | 08.24.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 08.24.2026 15:55 |
| Story ID: | 573115 |
| Location: | FORT RUCKER, ALABAMA, US |
| Web Views: | 22 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, No Missing Piece: Veteran Family Shares Hope Through Hardships, by Brittany Trumbull, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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