The last thing Don Schaake ever thought he would see was a picture of his son sitting on a deposed dictator’s gold throne in a country half a world away.

But there Kurt Schaake was, in a photograph e-mailed straight from Baghdad, Iraq. The 49-year-old, a slight smile on his face, was waving one finger in the air, on the throne in the chapel of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace.

“What next?” wondered Don Schaake, a retired Lawrence architect, as he recalled with a chuckle his reaction upon seeing the picture.

Kurt Schaake is not serving with the U.S. military in Iraq. He is a civilian working with Iraqis who are trying to rebuild their country.

A Lawrence High School and Kansas University graduate, Kurt Schaake is a civil engineer. Last summer he was starting his own engineering consulting firm in Colorado Springs, Colo. But he decided to put that on hold and go in a different direction. He sent a written proposal about rebuilding efforts in Iraq to Research Triangle Institute near Chapel Hill, N.C.

Rebuilding Iraq

The institute has a contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development to provide local governance support in postwar Iraq. The institute’s job is to foster social and political stability by helping meet citizens’ needs, according to the firm’s Web site.

Don Schaake doesn’t know exactly what his son sent to the institute.

“I haven’t seen the proposal, but whatever it was they liked it,” he said. “They found out he was available and snapped him up immediately.”

Kurt Schaake, Lawrence, sits in a golden throne at a presidential palace in Iraq. Schaake, an engineer, is a civilian contractor helping to rebuild war-torn Iraq.

That was in August. By the first of October, Kurt Schaake found himself in Iraq as part of a large team consisting of Americans and foreigners who are experts in different fields. Kurt Schaake has experience in many aspects of engineering, but he is not necessarily in Iraq to be an engineer, his dad said.

A part of history

Kurt Schaake’s main job is to meet with Iraqis — mayors, sheiks, members of the Provisional Governing Council — and offer them advice on organizing the rebuilding process, his dad said.

“It’s history,” Don Schaake said. “He seems to think it is a great opportunity. It’s a challenge. He’s very upbeat about it.”

When he was leaving, Kurt Schaake told his dad he planned to keep a daily log of his experiences and e-mail them home. Don Schaake doesn’t have a computer set up at home, so he relies on friends and relatives to pass on his son’s e-mails. Father and son also have talked by phone a few times.

The e-mail logs have become shorter as the weeks have passed and Kurt Schaake has found himself getting busier. He is working primarily in the Sunni Triangle around Baghdad.

Concerns and needs

Don Schaake, Kurt's father, looks at the picture his son e-mailed from Iraq.

The e-mails have described his visits with village and city leaders, which in one incident involved sitting shoeless on a rug drinking Iraqi tea; his concern about taking a shower under rusty water in a Baghdad hotel; and his visit to a school where children led him around by the hand while telling him about their hopes for the future in a language Kurt Schaake is trying to learn.

“We found out that the only thing they want more than to learn to read and write was soccer balls and candy,” he wrote in one e-mail.

Kurt Schaake also has befriended the families of some of the Iraqis with whom he works.

“In the Shiite area he got along pretty well,” Don Schaake said of his son. “In Saddam’s home area he gets what he says is ‘an earful.’ He likes the Iraqis.”

Both son and father, though, are aware of the dangers in Iraq. Attacks against Americans have increased in recent weeks. Car bombs exploding and middle-of-the-night gunfire sometimes keeps his son awake, Don Schaake said.

Private security officers and translators also were sent to Iraq by the institute to work with their employees. Kurt Schaake travels in a sport utility vehicle with a driver, a couple of other passengers and a gun-toting guard.

‘Very proud’

“They drive as fast as they can around the barricades, zigzagging from one place to get to another,” Don Schaake said. “He’s into something there that is dangerous. He’s aware of that, but he ignores it as far as talking to me or the e-mails that he sends.”

Americans were surprised at how badly damaged Iraq’s infrastructure was, primarily because of Saddam’s indifference to his people, Don Schaake said.

“The money has all gone to build fancy palaces and gold chairs,” Don Schaake said.

His son has told him most of the Iraqis he’s talked to want American help, Don Schaake said. They don’t want Americans to leave too soon.

“That’s their biggest scare,” Don Schaake said his son told him. “The people have the feeling that their problems may be resolved as part of politics in Washington, and that doesn’t sound good to them.”

Kurt Schaake signed a one-year contract to work for the institute in Iraq with an extension option. He might get a vacation in March and a chance to return to Lawrence and Colorado Springs, Colo., where his two teenage daughters and former wife live, his dad said.

“I’m very proud of the guy,” Don Schaake said.