Military couples learning to live an ocean apart
| • | Approved ways to survive deployments |
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
Both farewells and homecomings require adjustments for military couples, and Navy couples typically experience more separations than those in the other services. Here, Antonio Munoz hugs his girlfriend, Stacy Minster, as the USS Port Royal prepares to leave Pearl Harbor on its way to assist in Operation Enduring Freedom.
By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer
Laura Blankenship was engaged for a month before her boyfriend left on his first Navy deployment.
They were married for six months when her husband, a pilot, had to go again.
She learned she was pregnant a week before Persian Gulf duty called Lt. John Blankenship away once more.
Lucky for Laura Blankenship, she saw this coming.
Blankenship, 26, who lives on the Navy base at Pearl Harbor, came from a military family. She went through Reserve Officers Training Corps in college, and her independent spirit helped attract her husband from the start. She knew when she took on a military marriage that it would mean lots of separations before the happily-ever-after part.
Life on the home front has gotten more stressful for just about everyone since Sept. 11. But military spouses with a loved one on deployment have an extra burden in that they must learn to weather the pressure of post-attack America alone.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Since the September attacks, Hawai'i hasn't had any large-scale deployments to the Gulf, as there were a decade ago during the Gulf war. Military officials say security reasons prevent them from revealing how many forces have been deployed to specific areas.
April Hile of Kailua prepares a care package for her husband, Alex, a Navy aviation and machinist mate stationed at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
But it's clear that hundreds of Hawai'i families are waiting for their loved ones to come home.
The Pearl Harbor-based cruiser Port Royal, with a crew of more than 400, was the latest to go. It left last week to join the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier battle group in support of the military mission in Afghanistan.
Blankenship tries not to dwell on her time apart from her husband. Her secret is keeping busy. She's a full-time corporate meeting and event planner, and she's preparing for a baby. When her husband comes home next month, she expects to be ready to deliver six weeks later.
"I'm OK by myself. I don't like it, necessarily, but I can do it by myself. I can even change my car battery by myself," she said. "You cannot dwell on how bad it is. You have no choice, and why worry about what you cannot change?"
Since the September attacks, Internet prayer groups and message boards have overflowed with military families seeking and sending support.
April Hile has logged on mostly to make e-mail connections with her husband, James Alexander Hile, an aviation machinist deployed to Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean where U.S. long-range bombers are based. He is among the Golden Eagles of Patrol Squadron Nine, the same as John Blankenship.
It's 21-year-old April Hile's first experience with a deployment. She moved two months ago from Florida to Kailua solo, just as her husband was beginning his stint in the Persian Gulf. She fills her time playing with their two dogs, sending him care packages and counting down the days until she sees him again. She expects him to be back by mid-December.
For the Hiles, the biggest relationship saver has been a special phone line routed by the military through Hawai'i as a local call, reducing the 8,000 miles between them.
"There's some things that we can't talk about because it's a monitored line," she said. "He's 16 hours and a day ahead. I stay up until at least midnight every night waiting for him to call."
When the U.S. bombings in Afghanistan began, the military cut off all phone and e-mail communication. Phone and e-mail lines have resumed for many couples.
Susan Michael, 32, who lives at Pearl Harbor, has been through two six-month deployments by her husband.
When Lt. Cmdr. Kyle Michael, a Navy helicopter pilot, was in the Mediterranean in the early 1990s, "there was no e-mail yet, and you'd go months without a letter," she said.
During her husband's second deployment, she was pregnant and had a 2-year-old who kept asking for his daddy.
"You don't know what to tell them," she said. "I'd just tell him, 'Daddy's on a big ship, working.'"
A day-at-a-time attitude is what gets military families through times apart.
Even in other military branches, which tend to have shorter deployments than the Navy does, membership in support groups and requests to prayer chains have surged since Sept. 11.
Army chaplain David R. Brock of the !=liamanu Military Reservation chapel muses about the communication lag during World War II, when mail call was the high point of most soldiers' days. Time and technology have improved some aspects of staying in touch. But the emotional toll hasn't gone away.
"If you're having trouble, go see a chaplain," Brock said. "That's what we're here for."
What Laura Blankenship worries about now is what things will be like in a month when her husband comes home.
She and her husband have been apart for much of their 2 1/2-year marriage, and when he sees her again, she will be seven months' pregnant with their first child.
"This is our third deployment," she said. "So we're getting to be old hands at it, unfortunately."
But there's still some nervousness. It will mean adjusting to the ups and downs of day-to-day life.
With his homecoming, they must reconnect and learn to live together again."I think the hardest part about the deployment is when they come home," she said. "Because you get used to living by yourself."
