BY BRIAN KELLY
Herald Writer
ABOARD THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN – The telephone call started something like this:
“Gilbert?”
“Who’s this?”
“Gilbert!”
“Who’s this!”
Airman Chris Pina was trying to reach out and touch his brother, Gilbert, with a cell phone call after the USS Abraham Lincoln left Pearl Harbor on its way home from an almost 10-month deployment.
Standing in the expansive hangar bay of the aircraft carrier, Pina was part of a strange sight: Here, there, everywhere, stood sailors with cell phones.
For Pina and many other sailors aboard the Everett-based aircraft carrier, it was the first time they had pulled out their cell phones and dialed home since the warship left Pearl Harbor for the Persian Gulf last summer.
Pina called his older brother, an Army paratrooper who is getting ready for deployment to Afghanistan, but instantly heard sibling static.
“He didn’t recognize who it was,” Pina said.
After the surprise was settled, the sailor told his brother what he was up to, and the pair swapped stories about their military jobs. Standing near a midship elevator in the hangar bay on the Lincoln, Pina then called his folks.
After Pina’s parents picked up the phone in Long Beach, Calif., they put him on the speakerphone so they could both hear his voice.
To the left of Pina, to the right, fore and aft, more sailors, more cell phones.
The reason? The hangar bay is the one place on the ship where cell phones work. It may be because it’s the deck on the ship with the biggest distance between ceiling and floor, or because of the four huge holes in the side of the hangar bay where elevators move aircraft up and down from the flight deck.
Combined with the ship’s arrival in Hawaii Saturday, where sailors could reactivate long-closed cell phone accounts, plus the chance to avoid the high cost of phone cards on the carrier, sailors have been pulling cell phones out of their coffin lockers and dusting them off with their ears.
Airman Jeff Mickelson, an aviation boatswain’s mate, said he’s used a phone card on the ship only three times during the deployment. The cost of the phone cards – $20 for about 20 minutes on one of the ship’s 20 sailor phones – isn’t the only problem, Mickelson said.
“There’s like a three-second delay,” he said, which causes awkward and pricey gaps in the conversation.
“That takes up even more time. It pretty much sucks.”
Mickelson closed his cell phone account last summer in Hawaii when the Lincoln was first starting its deployment.
“I didn’t want to pay for it for all these months with no reason,” he explained.
But when opportunity knocked, Mickelson picked up the phone. The sailor had his cell phone reactivated a few days ago in Hawaii.
He called his mom, Betty Mickelson, in Cypress, Calif., which is about 11/2 hours north of the Lincoln’s next stop in San Diego. He then called Phillip Borzoni, a friend since preschool.
The message for mom, “I’m coming home.”
And for his friend: “How much partying we’re going to do when I get home,” he said.
Reporter Brian Kelly: 425-339-3422 or kelly@heraldnet.com.
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