EVERETT — The U.S. Navy band played “When the Saints Go Marching In” and a throng of spectators squealed in delight while waving tiny American flags.
Aided by a tugboat, the USS Ford eased up to the Naval Station Everett pier.
Men in white uniforms stood at the warship’s rails, occasionally waving when glimpsing a loved one awaiting the arrival of the ship Thursday after a nearly five-month deployment in Southeast Asia.
Fireman Nick Shoemaker was the luckiest of the 220 sailors aboard the Ford. The Mariner High School graduate won a ship lottery to get off the vessel first and kiss his longtime girlfriend, Danielle McClory.
McClory, 19, also a 2006 Mariner graduate, didn’t care so much about the first kiss. She’s just glad Shoemaker is home.
“I haven’t seen him in a long time,” she said.
Shoemaker’s father, Randy Shoemaker, was able to join his son in Hawaii and travel across the Pacific on the Ford with his son. Family members frequently make the trip from Hawaii to the Northwest aboard naval ships at the end of deployments.
That was a bonus, said the sailor’s mother, Pennie Shoemaker.
Randy Shoemaker comes from a family with a proud tradition of military service, Pennie Shoemaker said. Her husband wasn’t able to sign up for the Navy because of a health issue, she said.
“Now his son gets a taste of something he never had,” Pennie Shoemaker said.
The Ford, a guided-missile frigate, is one of three of the Oliver Hazard Perry class warships assigned to the naval station. By chance, it was picked to go on a cruise to Southeast Asia, commanding officer Cmdr. Michael Taylor said.
The ship had only six weeks’ notice that it would deploy on what the Navy calls a Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training trip in Southeast Asia, Taylor said. Another Everett ship had been scheduled to go, but encountered problems with its rudder, and the Ford went in its stead.
Taylor was anxious to go, even though the ship had returned from a long cruise off South and Central America in July 2006.
“It’s considered to be one of the best deployments on the books these days,” Taylor said.
The ship worked with navy personnel from a dozen nations in Southeast Asia, drilling on ship, land and sea. It conducted a series of exercises, often with crew members exchanging positions on other nation’s ships.
The exercises are designed to foster strong international relations with those nations, and to bolster the forces in the area, Taylor said.
Some of those navies have older ships, but Taylor said he learned that the sailors there are professional.
“They are good,” he said. “We learned a lot.”
The ship visited such places as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Jakarta and Saipan, traveling more than 21,000 miles.
Meanwhile, four new fathers also got off the ship early to greet babies born during the deployment.
One of those was Petty Officer 3rd Class Mark McKee, who got to hold 2-month-old son Quinn. His wife, K’Lee McKee, said she hates deployments but has a lot of help from family and friends in Tacoma.
The couple’s other children, Homer, 1, and Kyra, 3, were dressed in sailor outfits for the homecoming.
Also on the pier, Kylie Farthing, 2, let out ear-piercing screams as she got a look at her dad still aboard the ship. Her mother, Karrie Farthing, just moved to Everett from Ohio and was looking forward to greeting her husband, Petty Officer 3rd Class Alan Farthing.
“She’s her daddy’s daughter,” Karrie Farthing said of Kylie. She talks about her ship-bound husband a lot at home. Kylie and her older sister respond to her talk.
“That’s all they talk about,” she said.
The separations are tough, but “easier to handle when I have my kids. So it’s OK,” Karrie Farthing said.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or jhaley@heraldnet.com.
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