Associated Press
BREMERTON — From 12,000 miles away, Robert Miller gazes and coos at his 12-day-old son, Alex.
Miller, aboard the USS Carl Vinson in the Arabian Sea, is looking at Alex for the first time, thanks to a real-time satellite video link that connects the father aboard the aircraft carrier and his newborn son here at home.
In a Navy classroom here, Lacy Miller carefully positioned Alex in his car seat in front of a video camera on Monday and watched as her husband appeared on a screen.
"I can see him now! I can see his eyes," exclaimed Robert Miller, a petty officer third class on the Bremerton-based carrier taking part in the strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In all, 29 families are taking advantage of video and audio equipment that allows new fathers to view and talk to babies born after the Vinson departed in July.
Kessara Guerrero, a training facilitator with the Navy Learning Network at Naval Station Bremerton, wanted to find some way to bring fathers together with their newborn children. She set up the video hookup on the Vinson after hearing about a similar trial program on the San Diego-based carrier USS Constellation. Two Bremerton-area families were the first to test the technology last week.
Each family is given 20 minutes of air time. The system isn’t perfect. Face-to-face contact is interrupted if the ship deviates from its course. Some families lost contact in the middle of their allotted time and had to wait for the connection to be re-established.
But nobody was complaining.
Brandy Lewis, along with 2-month-old Elijah and 2-year-old Brandon, waited two hours to see her husband, Derrick Lewis, a petty officer third class. He was shown on the screen wearing dungarees with rolled up sleeves.
"You look good," Brandy Lewis said.
"You look good, too," her husband replied. "I see you’ve got your hands full. … I miss you."
Another crewman, Petty Officer 2nd Class Mike Campos, got a chance to view and talk to his wife, Tina, holding their 2 1/2-month-old son, Caden.
"Don’t let him walk till I get home," Campos told his wife.
Technology has become important for Navy families to keep in touch with their loved ones. While many Bremerton-area businesses have been slowing in the soured economy and with so many crews out to sea, cell phone providers and computer companies are reporting flourishing sales.
Bremerton is home to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, while Naval Submarine Base Bangor is on nearby Hood Canal and Naval Station Everett, across Puget Sound, is home to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
A-1 Computers in Bremerton has seen a steady stream of Navy wives rushing in to get their computers fixed.
"There’s never a dull moment in this shop now," said Chad Brown of A-1 Computers. "They’ll come in at noon and say, ‘My husband can only send me an e-mail at 3 p.m., I gotta talk to him.’ "
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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