Nashua Telegraph (New Hampshire)
STEWARTSTOWN, N.H. (AP) - A National Guard staff sergeant who headed the community’s Police Department for five years is coming home from Iraq to an uncertain job.
Selectmen wrote Brendon McKeage in November that a full-time job to oversee the Police Department in the town of 1,100 people was created and filled in his absence. Selectmen offered McKeage, who had been part-time chief, a part-time patrolman’s job.
His wife, Wanda McKeage, is furious. “He worked for them for five years. It was a slap in the face,” she said Tuesday.
McKeage, who lives in Pittsburg, serves with the 2nd Battalion, 197th Field Artillery Brigade, which is scheduled to be back in Fort Dix, N.J., on Friday.
Connie Coviello, head of the Board of Selectmen, told The Union Leader on Monday, she didn’t know what the “hullabaloo” was about.
“We are offering Brendon a position as part-time police officer at the same salary,” she said and insisted that McKeage never was sworn in as chief but was the “officer in charge.”
“He’s got the badge that says ‘police chief’ on it,” Wanda McKeage said Tuesday.
Brendon McKeage is also a full-time corrections officer at the Coos County jail, one of several officers called up for duty. When McKeage left for Iraq, so did another Stewartstown officer, and the community was left without any police.