CLEARWATER, Fla. — It started as a school assignment.

Six-year-old Jannah Lynn was supposed to exchange letters with a soldier in Iraq. But her mom didn't want the name of any random soldier. So Carol Medvec went to New Wilmington Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania where she attended services and asked for a soldier's name from their pen pal program.

She was given Army Reserve Sgt. Jim Schultz.

"Dear Sgt. Schultz. Hi. You are in Iraq. I want to thank you. You are brave," Jannah Lynn wrote in November 2006.

"Dear Jannah Lynn, Thank you for writing me. Being a soldier you have to be brave, you have to be strong, there's time you have to leave your family, but there's time you get to come back," he wrote, and included postcards with pictures of Iraq that she could take to class for show and tell.

So began a correspondence with Jannah Lynn that would soon grow to include her four siblings and eventually their mother. And suddenly this soldier was not just serving his country. He was saving a family.

Thousands of miles away in Iraq, the walls around Schultz's bunk beds were empty. His buddies had pictures of their wives and children, but 46-year-old Schultz was long divorced with children in their 20s too old to color pictures.

When he returned home from his first tour of duty in 2004 he sat on his duffel bag at the airport and watched the reunions until he was the last one in the parking lot. Then he walked to a nearby hotel and checked in for a few weeks before renting a small, one-bedroom apartment in New Wilmington, Pa.

After his shifts as a forklift operator at a cheese plant, he returned to a sparse apartment, watched TV on an air mattress and ate fast food and frozen dinners with his cat, Rascal, close by.

Not far from the cheese plant at the Medvec home, Carol and the kids were trying to adjust to life without a father. Carol, 42, divorced her husband in 2004, the same year Schultz returned from his first tour of duty.

Lonely nights. Lonely lives. Only a mile apart.

Back in Iraq for the second time, Schultz, a mechanic stationed about 180 miles north of Baghdad, ran recovery missions for the National Guard, fixing trucks and bringing them back to base when they take a hit.

He'd gotten plenty of letters from kids like 9-year-old Randy from California and 9-year-old Kelly in Michigan. He tried to write them back, but sometimes he'd be away from base for days, often with little sleep.

He always found a way to write to the Medvec kids. One day Carol answered one of his calls.

He sounds like Jack Nicholson, she thought.

At first, they talked mostly about the kids. Sometimes he knew more than she did.

"Do you really know where Luke is going tonight," he asked once.

He's worrying about my kids while he's in Iraq. What kind of man does that?

Later, they realized Schultz had worked at the cheese plant a mile from her home. They went to the same high school and spent most of their lives in tiny New Wilmington, with a population of about 2,500.

Soon they were spending three or four hours at a time on the phone, splitting the roughly $400 monthly phone bill.

"I really felt like I knew him forever," she said.

Last March he flew to Pittsburgh International Airport for a nine-day vacation.

She hid behind a pillar to watch him come down the escalator. He gave her a hug and a big kiss.

"I'm going to marry her, she is so god-awful gorgeous," Jim thought, looking at her petite frame and strawberry blond hair.

Three days later they married at the same church where Carol had gotten his name.