Reagan returns from maiden deployment

From Navy Times

July 07, 2006

Carrier Reagan returns from maiden deployment

By Gidget Fuentes

Times staff writer

CORONADO, Calif. — With a swarm of colorful posters and festive balloons all around him, Aviation Electronics Technician 1st Class (AW/SW) Ruel Concepcion took in a deep breath and glanced at his ship.

“It looks like it’s been through a lot,” said Concepcion, 43, of San Francisco. “I can’t believe it, a six-month deployment. Her first one. This is memorable.”

The aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, all 1,092 feet of military might, had nudged to its berth at North Island Naval Air Station on Thursday to complete its maiden operational deployment.

This homecoming was the first time in Concepcion’s 19 years as a sailor that he stood on firm ground instead of manning the rails. After four months afloat, working in Reagan’s aircraft intermediate maintenance department, he returned to San Diego to serve as a training officer with the ship’s Beach Detachment. In recent weeks, as the training leading petty officer, he’s helped organize the huge homecoming festivities along the carrier pier.

“I’m glad to see her do a successful, wonderful cruise,” he said, stopping at one point to give a “welcome home” greeting and shake hands with a shipmate searching the vast crowded parking lot for his family.

Smiles abounded. Fire Controlman 2nd Class (SW) Marsha Schaal returned home, proud to have attained the qualification as an enlisted surface warfare specialist. The deployment came after a tour on the support ship Camden and the extended 2002-2003 deployment with the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group.

She fell into the embrace of Laurie and Charles Schaal, her parents, among some 1,700 “Tigers” who rode Reagan and its ships home from Hawaii.

“That was my first time on the water,” said a grinning Charles, who had flown to Hawaii from their home in Austin, Texas. “We loved it. They did a fine job of entertaining us. We got 1,000 pictures.”

Standing on the pier, a beaming Rear Adm. Michael H. Miller spoke gleefully of the sailors and the strike group’s accomplishments.

“The good Lord has smiled with us all the way through,” said Miller, who the strike group commander. “We brought everybody back who we left with.”

Reagan led a strike group and carrier air wing that flew nearly 3,000 combat sorties over Iraq, often supporting U.S. or coalition ground forces, and which conducted anti-piracy missions off the Horn of Africa, operations with the Iraqi navy in the Northern Persian Gulf and maritime interdictions in the Arabian Sea. During the deployment that took them to the Persian Gulf and through the Western Pacific, crew members went ashore to help repaint old schoolhouses, help villagers and complete some 52 community relations missions.

Crew members “were wonderful ambassadors of America,” Miller said. “This ship is a living legacy” to the late president’s memory, he added.

“This is about doing your very best to leave the world a better place than you found it,” he said.

Reagan will remain in a “ready” status for several months, Miller said.

The homecomings stretched across San Diego Bay, where the destroyers Decatur and McCampbell and the cruiser Lake Champlain arrived at the 32nd Street station at San Diego Naval Base earlier in the morning.

Robert Hicks, a retired chief petty officer from Harrah, Okla., was about to experience a ship’s homecoming for the very first time.

Despite his 22 years in the Navy, deploying worldwide with naval air wings and tallying more than 5,000 flight hours, , Hicks had never been out to sea. That naval tradition is carried by his son, Gas Turbine Systems Technician (Mechanical) 3rd Class (SW) Robert “Jim” Hicks, a 19-year-old on his first combat deployment with Decatur.

“I’m very proud of him,” said the elder Hicks, savoring the excited hubbub of the crowd on Pier 2 as they watched Decatur glide across the bay.

He was clearly soaking in the experience of a homecoming, with its white-clad sailors, young women dolled up in sundresses and strollers festooned with American flags.

“This,” he said, “is the Navy, right here. This is what the Navy is about.”

He tried to ease the nerves of Monique Plottner, his son’s girlfriend and mother of a year-old daughter and 2-year-old son, who could barely contain her emotions. Less than an hour later, the brow came down and across came Decatur’s crew. The couple shared a warm kiss and embrace, and the sailor hugged his father.

At that, his father laid eyes on more immediate plans. “We’re going to go hunt for a cold beer, and we’re going to find a steak,” he said.

Next to Decatur, the crew of McCampbell each got a hand shake and some words from their skipper.

“Morale never lagged. There was never a lull in the action, yet they were challenged,” said Cmdr. Vince McBeth. “They have my utmost respect and admiration.”

McBeth said he tried to remind them of that, reinforcing what he calls “the McCampbell Way,” a philosophy of duty, honor, mission, integrity and shipmates that is reinforced in a plaque on the ship’s quarterdeck.

“Everyone is a shipmate first,” he said, “and then you assume whatever title they may have.”