EVERETT — Michelle Meng and her 8-year-old daughter, Megan, stood at the edge of the wharf watching tugboats gently pull a U.S. warship away from a pier at Naval Station Everett.
The ship was taking away her husband and Megan’s father, Chief Robert Meng.
For the third time in about two years, the USS Ford left the naval station for a lengthy deployment abroad.
Michelle Meng has been with the chief for 13 years and this will be his sixth deployment on various ships.
She occupies herself with friends, family members and community activities during his absences. She looks forward to the weekly e-mails she gets from her husband.
“You never get used to it,” she said of the deployments.
The Ford, a guided-missile frigate, returned from deployment in September, after what the Navy calls a Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training trip to Southeast Asia. The new deployment will be the same. Prior to that, it returned from a six-month cruise off Central America in July 2006.
The cruise will mean plenty of “real-world training” with allied navies in Southeast Asia, Ford commanding officer Cmdr. John Wilshusen said.
Search and seizure, boarding ships and looking for weapons and drugs will be on the training schedule for the crew. They might even run across some real pirates operating in the area.
Wilshusen’s crew will team up with sailors from such places as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines teaching them what they know, and often learning from the foreign sailors, the commander said.
“We call it theater security cooperation,” with the hope that the smaller navies would be able to work with U.S. forces if the need arises, he said.
The Ford will have the company of another frigate, a dock landing ship and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter on the deployment.
It’s also expected that the Ford’s engine and electronic repair crews will work on maintenance and repair of ships from the other navies.
Most of the crew that was on the previous deployment are going on this one, Wilshusen said. That could pay dividends for sailors who make friends and acquaintances with foreign sailors now and encounter them sometime in the future, the skipper added.
The sailors will be busy with the ship, but those left ashore will have to find something else to occupy their time.
Ciara Smith and Johanna An stood on the pier waving to their new husbands. An married Ensign Alan Cabiling on March 27 and Smith married Ensign Anthony Smith on April 1. Both couples live in Lynnwood.
Ciara Smith intends to spend most of the deployment time with her parents in Georgia. Perhaps she’ll finish college, she said.
Both women said they aren’t worried about their husbands because the ship is not scheduled to go to the war zone.
“I’m kind of jealous,” Ciara Smith said. “He gets to do some crazy things while I’m stuck in Georgia. I just want him to have fun.”
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or jhaley@heraldnet.com.
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