Delay sweetens sailors' return
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
It was hurry up and wait all over again.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
After six months of waiting for their loved ones to return from the Middle East, the friends and relatives of Patrol Squadron 47 found out they'd have to cool their heels for two hours more.
Jay Roback weeps with joy as his wife, Petty Officer 3rd Class Lorie Roback, returns home from a six-month deployment in the Middle East with Patrol Squadron 47.
Finally, at 3:07 p.m. yesterday, an Omni Air International DC-10 aircraft carrying some 350 sailors roared to earth.
The rousing fanfare and ear-splitting cheers, plus the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet Band's rousing rendition of the National Emblem March, seemed equal to the big plane's powerful engines and smoky screeching tires.
"Welcome Home VP-47 — Bravo Zulu!" read one sign — and there was no doubt these folks believed the sentiment meant "Well done!"
The sailors were scheduled to arrive at 10:30 yesterday morning after a six-month deployment conducting flying surveillance and reconnaissance combat missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The arrival was rescheduled for 1:30 p.m., then delayed until 3 p.m. because — as Cmdr. Jim Landers explained to the gathering inside Hangar 104 at Marine Corps Base Hawai'i— the plane had departed Singapore three hours late. He said they'd hoped the time could be made up in the air, "but apparently that didn't happen."
By the time the plane taxied to where hundreds of loved ones had lined up and were fidgeting on the tarmac at 3:30, the anticipation level had reached a fever pitch.
Ivonne Villasenor, 19, and Idalis Camacho, 18, were pressed tight against the rope stretched around the open-air tent where the crowd awaited.
The two had vowed to charge past the rope at the first sight of the objects of their affection — Petty Officer 3rd Class Alexis Manobanda, 20, Villasenor's fiance, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Cesar Pastorsylva, 24, whom Camacho said was "soon to be engaged," whether he knew it or not.
"I'm ready to be rid of both of them," quipped Susana Guijarro, Villasenor's mother, whose own husband, Army Sgt. Joe Guijarro, is in Afghanistan and not due to return until next April. "They've been without their men for too long."
As Petty Officer 3rd Class Lorie Roback, a flight engineer, walked from the plane toward the gathering, her husband Jay stepped out into the sun and yelled, "Lorie!"
A second later, the two were locked in a long, tearful embrace.
"It's been too long since I've seen her," Jay Roback said at last. He said the couple had no plans except to be together.
"We're just going to stay home tonight," he said. "Lorie's birthday is on Monday, and we're going to go to Hale Koa — which she doesn't know yet. And afterwards we're going to go to the Mai Tai bar."
Not far away, Honolulu Police Sgt. Hank Holcombe, 55, kept a lookout for his son, Petty Officer 3rd Class Henry Holcombe, Jr., 23.
"This is my son's first deployment," said the former Navy man. "I did 14. He's been on the pier a couple of times for me when I came home; now there's going to be someone waiting there for him. He's going to be embarrassed because I'm still in my uniform, but sometimes life just works out that way."
Valerie Conner, who had been through a half dozen deployments, said waiting for her husband, Chief Petty Officer William Conner, never gets any easier. With her were the couple's children, Brandon, 12, and Ashley, 14, who had fashioned a lei out of newspapers that was easily the biggest on the base.
"When we left to come here, I told her, 'Don't take that,'" said Valerie. "And she said, 'But Mom, it's for Dad.' And I said, 'Oh, OK.' "
Of all those who waited, none was more focused than Deborah Baggett, who had flown all the way from Lawrenceburg, Tenn., with her mother, Ann Wiseman, and two daughters, Kala Baggett, 17, and Rosa Baggett, 9.
"Welcome back Shane!" read the cover of the oversized greeting card the family had brought for Baggett's son, Petty Officer 3rd Class Shane Wiseman.
As other sailors joined their loved ones, Baggett and her family waited and watched and wondered. Then they spotted him, among the last to leave the plane.
"Shane!" screamed Baggett. "That's him right there in the red plaid shirt!"
And she let lose a Tennessee war whoop.
"Yeeeeee-ha!"
Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8038.
