"It got you from ship to ship," Lineback said of this tactical mission. It was "all in the interest of providing sailors with freedom of religion."
Last summer, at age 62 and after 27 years of service, Lineback, who'd earned the rank of captain and is now the staff chaplain at Provo's Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, reached mandatory retirement age. He misses his men - still can tear up when he speaks of them - but he's sustained by the memories and the knowledge that he'll always be one of them.
He never planned to join the Navy. Lineback was in his mid-30s and living in Los Angeles. He had a young family and a cush job as an educational counselor in the county jail. Flipping through the LDS Church News one day, however, he and his wife noticed a blurb announcing the need for military chaplains. His wife, off-hand, said she thought he'd "be a good one." He laughed and turned the page.
But the announcement stuck with him and her. For about two months he said they both felt compelled to "respond on a spiritual level." They knew nothing about military life, nor did they understand what chaplains did, but it felt like a call they couldn't shake.
"We prayed and cried about it for three weeks," Lineback remembered.
He then met with Joseph Wirthlin, now a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to see what he made of this gnawing idea. The church elder blessed Lineback with these words: "This will be your life's profession."
Soon after, he shipped off to chaplaincy school in Newport, R.I. .
The job isn't for everyone, and it's a position that's grossly underserved, Lineback said. People generally pursue chaplaincy - or clergy work in general - as a second career, which means they're older and have likely started families, which are hard to leave for months at a time. Bouncing around the globe, going on 20-mile hikes, learning to "shave in Humvee mirrors or by Braille," are job characteristics that weed out many.
Not him.
"You haven't lived until you've heard a thousand Marines snoring," he laughed. "It's a little bit Boy Scouts. . . If you like to jump out of perfectly good planes, or go under water, you'll do better."
Lineback, himself, never served in a battle zone. In his first seven years as a Navy chaplain - a position that serves marines, sailors and the coast guard - deployment meant serving on 15 different ships (not counting his helicopter drop-ins to smaller ships) and eight submarines. Although he led nondenominational services and offered prayers as requested, his job was just as much about providing comfort as it was spiritual sustenance.
He'd sit by as men absorbed their "Dear John" letters. He'd pass along concerns of mothers who often wrote him to share their worries. He'd perform burials at sea and watch over the newly enlisted as they struggled to adapt.
His was a career path that kept him, and his family, on the move. His three children grew up "all over the world," he said, living on bases in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, Japan and California. He spent the last 20 years of his service primarily on bases. At one point, in the mid-90s, between wars, he served as an alcohol rehab chaplain.
As a member of the LDS Church, he sometimes had to navigate suspicions. He described a pious Southern Baptist young man who initially refused to attend religious services. By inviting this Southern Baptist to participate, to offer up his own prayers, the chaplain found a way to make him feel welcome.
Earning trust and guarding secrets, even if some were so horrifying they kept Lineback up at night, was central to the work.
"That's the right and the privilege of a U.S. service person - to have a chaplain with whom he has total confidence," he said.
In the military, there are codes to live by, including the mandate to watch one another's backs. For Lineback, who spent the last few years of his service in New Orleans with the marine reserves, this always meant looking out for families, too. Preparing them for separation, helping wives to understand why their husbands kept stories to themselves, offering guidance to reunited families so that they might come together again. And when disaster kept that from happening, knocking on doors with officers to deliver bad news.
Truth is, the bad news didn't only come during wartime. In fact, in his three years in New Orleans, Lineback - whose Blackberry informed him of every Marine death or injury - said there were just as many losses due to car and motorcycle crashes at home as there were in Iraq. The difference? They didn't die heroes, a truth that required him to reach out in different ways.
He found "lay readers," volunteers to offer readings and prayers specific to groups so every person's spiritual needs were met, whether they were Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, Catholic, Wiccan or anything else. As a senior chaplain, he trained others to do this work, which is all the more important when the harsh realities and dangers of military service are most real.
"People get, by and large, more interested in religion before they go off to war," he said. "Life means a lot more."
He visited casualties in burn units, stood by the beds of men with lost limbs and steeped in depression, looked out for the ones whose silence sounded alarms. In closed-door rooms, he gathered units - or individuals - and encouraged them to talk about the worst that they'd seen in Iraq, to share their stories, fears and tears.
"They put it on the table, and the monster's not so big," Lineback said. "If we get guys to share their stories early on, then we do really well."
The challenge is making sure they're noticed and invited to the table, no easy task considering the numbers. In New Orleans, Lineback said he was one of 150 chaplains looking out for the welfare of 100,000 Marine reserves.
"How many do we miss?"
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* JESSICA RAVITZ can be reached at jravitz@sltrib.com or 801-257-8776. Send comments to the religion editor at religioneditor@sltrib.com.
Interested in becoming a LDS military chaplain?
Beginning in late June, Brigham Young University in Provo will offer a graduate program to train those interested in military chaplaincy as a profession. The curriculum will combine course work in religious education, marriage and family therapy, counseling psychology, social work, and marriage, family and human development. This new offering is a joint effort between BYU and military relations at LDS Church headquarters. For more information, write military@ldschurch.org or call 801-240-2286.
