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By BONNIE ADAMS; Times Leader Staff Writer
Saturday, March 07, 1998     Page: 1A

WEST PITTSTON- Pfc. William Yurchak last held his two sons a year ago, one
of whom is autistic and requires therapy.
   
Yurchak arrives home tonight from South Korea after the U.S. Army released
him so that his 2 1/2-year-old son can remain in treatment here.
    Yurchak sought a compassionate discharge because he and his wife felt
proper treatment was not available for their son in Texas, where Yurchak would
be stationed next.
   
“I feel that the Army has finally realized that children should come
first,” his wife Michelle said Friday.
   
She and their autistic son, Jean-Luc, and 4-year-old William Jr., remained
in West Pittston during their father’s yearlong overseas tour.
   
The youngest son understands only a few words and communicates through
aggression. He entered a program last week at Rutgers University and
Children’s Service Center of Wyoming Valley, where he receives intensive
in-home communication and behavioral education.
   
The boy’s 28-year-old mother said no comparable program was available at
Fort Hood, Texas, or elsewhere in the state.
   
Her husband applied for a compassionate discharge, but the couple became
discouraged, Michelle Yurchak said, after the application was returned several
times with a request for more information.
   
Their case drew the attention of U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, D-Nanticoke,
who has been in contact with Army officials for the last month.
   
“As a parent, the congressman certainly wanted to help the Yurchaks and is
pleased that the family will be reunited,” Kanjorski spokesman J.J. Balaban
said. “The congressman’s office has been in constant contact with the Army
urging that the case be resolved as promptly as possible.”
   
Army officials familiar with the Yurchaks’ case could not be reached for
comment.
   
“I am very pleased that I could be of help in resolving this situation,”
Kanjorski said Friday.
   
At 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, Yurchak called his wife from South Korea to tell her
that he had received his discharge papers and a plane ticket home.
   
“I’ve been going nuts ever since,” his wife said.
   
The couple’s Exeter Avenue home will have a touch of the holidays this
weekend to make up for what Michelle called a “bad Christmas.” She and her
mother-in-law, Patricia Yurchak, decorated a borrowed Christmas tree Friday
night.
   
On Sunday, the family will dine on ham, their traditional holiday meal.
That celebration will combine a homecoming and birthday party for the
returning soldier who turned 26 on Friday.
   
“We’re going all-out on this,” she said.
   
Yurchak signed a five-year contract with the Army in August 1996, before
Jean-Luc was diagnosed as being autistic. Both their sons have asthma, but
that would not have prevented the family from moving wherever the Army wanted
to send her husband, Michelle Yurchak said.
   
“We were willing to stay in the Army,” she said. But that changed last
September, when Jean-Luc was diagnosed with autism.
   
She said her husband, once a certified nurse’s aid, was very supportive
during her pregnancies, childbirth and while Jean-Luc underwent medical tests.
She is confident he will be involved with their son’s treatment.
   
“He has been there for everything,” she said. “He is a hands-on father.”
   
Though she said she would like to forget her husband’s Army stint, their
separation has had one benefit.
   
“At least I know I’m strong enough to take care of