Baby, what a long trip

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, August 8, 2006

EVERETT – Lashawn Wright knew firsthand the rigors of combining a family with military life.

Her dad, Tim Sewell, made a career as an enlisted man in the U.S. Navy and moved to Everett in 1994 with the USS Ingraham, one of the first two ships to call Naval Station Everett home.

Sewell and his family endured many a long family separation with deployments, but that didn’t deter his daughter from marrying Petty Officer 1st Class Roland Wright.

Roland Wright was one of the first sailors allowed off the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on Tuesday when it and the guided missile destroyer USS Shoup returned to the naval station after nearly six months abroad.

He was allowed off early because of the 2-month-old bundle of joy in Lashawn Wright’s arms, Zyanna.

About three dozen new Lincoln fathers got immediate leave and quick exits from the huge warship, rewards for tending to the nation’s business when children were born during the deployment.

Unlike the previous two deployments of the Lincoln and the Shoup, the sailors and airmen weren’t called upon to reach a wartime footing, such as in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They didn’t have to provide disaster relief, as the ships did in early 2005 following the tsunami in southeast Asia.

This time, the ships provided a military presence in the western Pacific, participating in several naval training exercises with numerous foreign and U.S. ships.

The exercises were part of the ships’ mission to project U.S. policy abroad and to present “an image of America as a global citizen who respects and enjoys cultures of other nations,” Lincoln commanding officer Capt. Andrew McCawley said. “The sailors of the Abraham Lincoln have performed in an exemplary fashion.”

What’s more, despite more than 7,500 dangerous warplane launches from the flight deck, there were no serious crew injuries, he said.

About 3,600 local sailors returned home with the two ships.

For crew members such as Wright, the thought of being home shone in his smile and in his eyes.

He gave his wife of a year a lingering hug, lifted her 7-year-old son, Zabre Sewell, and then took his 2-month-old daughter in his big hands. Tears welled in his wife’s eyes.

“It feels so great,” he said about being home. “It feels so good.”

Elsewhere, the pier and the wharf were crammed with hundreds of folks who came to greet the sailors. Political candidates handed out small American flags, clowns performed for children, and commercial sponsors advertised car loans, education and other offerings.

People held hand-painted signs, waved flags and cheered when the two ships, in turn, nudged toward the pier.

There was plenty of romantic drama on the pier.

The first thing Seaman Robert Bono of Everett did after leaving the Shoup was say “I love you” to his girlfriend, Nisha Pall. He knelt with a diamond ring in his hand and asked her: “Will you marry me?”

Pall expected the first line. She cried at the second.

Katherine Kindopp of Granite Falls held a sign welcoming her husband. It was the first time a deployment has separated her from Petty Officer 1st Class Trenton Kindopp.

“It’s been very difficult without him around,” she said. “You look at the pictures, know that it’s your husband, and you remind yourself that’s what he looks like.

And when a partner is away, the one staying home becomes the mom and the dad at the same time.

“My 5-year-old son thinks he is the man in the house and tried to help me,” Erin Wieder of Snohomish said. She came to meet her husband, Lt. Adam Wieder, a Shoup officer.

“It makes me feel really proud of him because he really wants to help, but it’s also sad because he feels like he has to do it since daddy is not home,” she added.

For many families, it’s a phone call or a picture from overseas that provides a sense of attachment, said Jen Sharkey of Marysville.

She was on the pier with her 21/2-year-old daughter. She and her husband, Seaman William Sharkey, learned in December that she was pregnant. He and the carrier left in February.

“I miss him a lot,” she said. “To be a pregnant woman with a toddler and to do everything by yourself, it’s hard.”

She said her daughter often shies away from her dad for several days after he returns from a deployment.

“It’s awkward because when she just gets used to him, he has to leave again,” she said.

He agrees.

“Every time when I come back, I fear that my daughter doesn’t know who I am,” he said. “It’s the feeling that you’ve been forgotten. It hurts.”

While deployed, he kept family photos in his wallet and beside his bed. He kissed the pictures every night before he went to sleep.

“The loneliness is over; I’m home,” William Sharkey said.

Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.