EVERETT – Karen Taylor vividly remembers the last time the USS Abraham Lincoln came back.
She rushed back from her job at the University of Montana and turned on the television in her Missoula home. The Lincoln, and her husband, Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Benjamin Taylor, had just pulled into port in Everett.
“I was just glued to the television. Started crying and bawling, and doing stupid stuff, like touching the television screen,” she recalled.
A few hours later, he called to say he was on the road home.
This time, Karen Taylor got to see the ship’s return in person.
Thursday’s homecoming was the first time the Lincoln has been at its homeport in a year. It left Everett in June 2003 for repairs in the shipyard in Bremerton, and left there a month ago for training off the coast of California.
As Karen Taylor waited for sailors to step off the Lincoln, her husband called again. She pulled a cellphone out of her purse – decorated with the famous photo of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square at the end of World War II – to hear her husband say he wouldn’t be getting off the ship for another hour.
Taylor took it in stride.
She said the couple will celebrate his 25th birthday a week late. After dinner and a homemade birthday cake, they’ll relax and watch some of his favorite movies.
“He just wants to relax. And not have to be on the go, and not have people tell him what to do,” she said with a laugh.
A crowd of about 300 waited at the foot of Naval Station Everett’s Pier A for the Lincoln’s arrival.
Kymberly Axtell looked for her husband, Petty Officer 2nd Class Darren Axtell, with her mother, Cirie Hand.
“It’s exciting,” said Kymberly Axtell wife, who took leave from her duty in the Coast Guard to welcome her husband home.
Axtell and her mother were wearing red, white and blue shirts that looked like Old Glory. Axtell held a bouquet of a dozen roses and was a giggly bundle of nervous energy waiting for her husband.
They’ve been married since 2002. And the couple found out they’re expecting a baby – their first – a week before he left.
The couple have not been through a standard deployment. Still, waiting for the ship’s return after a month away was tough, Axtell said. “It was hard, very hard. I missed him a lot.”
A busy weekend is planned. She said they would start with a visit to his favorite restaurant Friday night in Bothell.
There will be other reunions this weekend with family members, including one with Molly, the sailor’s Jack Russell terrier.
“She’s about as excited at him coming home as I am,” Axtell said. “She’s going to wet all over herself.”
The Lincoln is expected to stay in port through mid-July. The Nimitz-class carrier will then return to sea for more training. It’s expected to deploy again next spring.
Considering the hoopla surrounding the ship’s return from the war in Iraq in May 2003, though, the Lincoln’s homecoming this week was an understated affair.
There were no marching bands. No balloon-tying clowns for the kids. No live TV and sailor-stopping reporters, begging for interviews.
The scene sure looked different for Petty Officer 3rd Class Quentin Terrell. Last time there was a major mob when the carrier pulled in.
“You couldn’t walk on the pier. The pier was just full of bodies. You couldn’t see any concrete.”
Terrell quickly dropped his guitar Thursday when he stepped off the ship so he could give his wife, Erin, and 3-year-old daughter, Hannah, repeated kisses.
It was the longest time the couple have been apart since they got married a year and a month ago.
Erin Terrell said she couldn’t wait for the ship to come back to Everett. She went to San Diego to see him when the ship pulled in there.
“We couldn’t handle it,” she said.
Reporter Brian Kelly: 425-339-3422 kelly@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
