Veterans remember past Christmases spent deployed, now cherish time with family
For most families, it’s easy to spend Christmas with their loved ones. However, there are many veterans in Southern Maryland who didn’t get the privilege of spending the holiday with loved ones every year because they were away serving their countr y.
Jennifer Foxworthy of Lusby, an inspirational speaker, served in the Navy for 21 years. She served as a naval air crewman, an in-flight technician and retired as a chief petty officer in 2013.
“It definitely made me grow up and made me appreciate things even more because I was so far away from family,” Foxworthy said. “Those letters, the care packages, the phone calls, especially with the huge time difference, it meant a lot.”
Foxworthy flew in combat missions during the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars, which is when she
was periodically deployed during the holidays. She said she and her crew were in the desert during Christmas one year, and they were in a “war status” so they never got the day off.
“You just make the best of it. They cooked good
meals; they would have steak, lobster, ham. For Christmas they made a ham dinner; the food was good. The people that you work with were family away from family,” she said.
Foxworthy said that they did not put up a Christmas tree during the holidays. She said some people would put up small trees in their rooms, but packing light and bringing only essentials was important.
“I had a Los Angeles Lakers Santa hat, and I would wear that during flight and off time during the holiday season,” Foxworthy said, laughing.
She said that she was able to call home for Christmas, but the time difference was daunting.
“I think that’s one thing that a service member has a mindset to not take anything for granted because we’ve been in those situations where you can’t easily get to our loved ones, and it can create some sad times and things like that, but you just try and push through it because you know that you’re serving our country and there’s a mission to do, especially when you are flying combat missions during a war,” she said.
Foxworthy said she was missing a significant other at the time and close friends that she was stationed with on base, and farther away were her parents and other family members.
She said while deployed she only spent about a few Christmases at home with her parents. During her
military career she was deployed on missions during about four Christmases, where she was unable to see any family or loved ones. The other Christmases she was stationed across the country and could not leave to go home, but was able to spend it with her friends on base.
“I do remember one time we flew over Times Square on New Year’s Eve as the ball was dropping,” Foxworthy said.
“Thats a memory I will never forget, to be in the air looking down on Times Square on New Year’s, and me and my crew were counting down and we were over Times Square as the ball dropped.”
Foxworthy said that Christmas is not the only holiday that deployed service members miss.
“It’s not just Christmas, obviously it’s the Easters, the New Year’s, the Thanksgivings. I was grateful that I didn’t have any children at that time during the main parts of my service, because it would have been even harder to leave and to miss those holidays.
“I have a 6-year-old son, but I was on shore duty at [Naval Air Station Patuxent River] while I was pregnant with him,” she said.
She said she had never had to spend any holidays away from her son, Noah. However, while deployed she said she had coworkers who had to miss Christmas with their children.
“I could see the hardship on them, doing the phone calls or [video calls]. It was hard for them sometimes to focus because they were not only missing their children opening up their presents, but their spouse had to hold down the fort and play both roles ... mommy and daddy. I really felt sorry for my coworkers who had children, because that just put a strain on them,” she said.
Foxworthy said that serving in the Navy and being deployed and away from family during the holidays changed her perspective.
She said when she would get to spend a Christmas with her family she “hugged them tighter, I said ‘I love you’ more often, just enjoyed each and every moment, because many times when you’re in a war situation you never know what’s going to happen, so you’re just grateful to come home to your loved ones. So, yeah you hug them tighter and express how much you love them and how much they mean to you.”
Foxworthy said she met and married her husband out west in Washington, before getting orders to Maryland at Pax River.
“I wanted to have a child; we bought a house in Lusby, and tried to have a baby. Now we have a 6-year-old son, Noah. That makes holidays even sweeter,” Foxworthy said. “It’s a beautiful thing I get to experience the holidays as whole family, me, my husband and my son.”
She said sometimes they go to Pennsylvania to spend Christmas with her family, sometimes to Indiana to visit her husband’s family, and sometimes they stay in Maryland.
“We treasure those moments being with our parents and friends,” Foxworthy said.
One special hour
Rickey Fields of Waldorf, a La Plata police officer, served 11 years in the U.S. Coast Guard as an administrator and boarding team member, which conducted law enforcement on the ship from New York to Maine.
Fields was stationed in Governors Island, N.Y., on a ship called a buoy tender, the crew on the ship would be deployed on the boat from two to three weeks at a time.
“That was the only real time I was away from the family, was during time on the ship,” he said.
He was married and he and his wife had a young daughter at the time he was stationed on the ship. Fields’ wife and daughter lived on base nearby.
He said that one of the times he was deployed on the ship was around Christmas time. Fields said his crew got lucky and pulled into port on Christmas Day.
“It was a surprise because everybody just knew we weren’t going to make it in Christmas day,” he said. “My wife was shocked that I was able to walk in the door that day.”
The other time he missed out on Christmas with his family was when he had mandatory personnel duty aboard ship on Christmas Day. He said a friend of his filled in for him for an hour, so that he could go home and see his wife and daughter.
“I was able to go home for an hour see her open up gifts, hug the family and then go back to the ship,” Fields said.
He said that it wasn’t so bad because his family was able to come on the ship later in the day, so he opened up a gift his daughter gave him and spent more time with them.
However, he said some people would have duty for a whole weekend on the ship and if Christmas fell during that time, they would have to miss being home. Fields said that the ship he was on was “family oriented” allowing family to come on board, which made the holidays better for those who had duty.
Fields said that during the holidays on the ship they would play Christmas music on the loud speaker and decorate with a Christmas tree.
The tree “was very little because we were on the ship. If it rolls, it was gone,” he said.
He said that since the command would let family members visit he didn’t miss his family too much, unless he was underway. Fields had his daughter on the ship with him often, while they were in port.
“She basically grew up with me on the ship,” he said.
However, he said in some instances he had to leave on the ship unexpectedly.
“One incident I was home playing with her and we got a call saying a helicopter had crashed and we had to go get it out of the ocean. I had to leave her with the neighbor until the wife came home because it was all hands on deck,” Fields said.
He said it was hard to leave in those types of situations, but it was part of the job.
In 2007, the Georgia native retired as a chief in the Coast Guard. Later that year he was hired as a La Plata police officer.
He and his wife now have three children, ages 24, 21 and 17.
“Now my kids are older, there’s no getting up early” for Christmas, Fields said laughing.
“Then they were smaller, so it meant more. On the ship it was harder because that was my first born, and you try to spoil her rotten and be there as much as you could. Sometimes we would be gone for three weeks and sometimes we’d be gone for a month,” he said.
Christmas in the Pacific
Philip Lang of Charlotte Hall, a retiree, served in the Navy for seven years, from 1964 to 1971. He said he joined when he was around 21 years old.
For a year and a half he was stationed on Guam. During that time, at least once he was away from Guam during Christmas.
He said his crew would get two flights a night every other night for three weeks, “so daytime or what day of the week it was, was kind of academic. As long as we had a cold beer, a can of chili, we were able to get along.”
At Christmas, they didn’t have any type of special meals or celebration during his time away from Guam.
On Guam, the single guys would get invited to a married pilot’s home for dinner, he said. If there were a group of singles who did not get invited anywhere, they would just ride their motorcycles around the island.
“Guam’s 32 miles long, by 4 to 8 miles wide, and had a lot of nice beaches to snorkel and things like that, so you could find things to do on the days off,” Lang said.
He said it was easier to focus his mind on flying rather than missing home.
“I didn’t really worry about being gone, I found other things to keep me occupied to keep the mental anguish from coming up.”
He said when he retired from the service he got married and had his first child in Washington, near the Columbia River. He said at the time he didn’t have much money to travel to see his parents in Philadelphia, but they both came to see him when his son was born.
“That took away any homesickness I had,” Lang said.
He said for Christmases with his wife and son, they would put up a tree and have a nice dinner. “My wife was a very good cook, and she would put a hurting on a turkey,” he said.
After a divorce, Lang said a job offer at the Indian Head base in 1974 brought him to Charles County, where he worked as an engineer for about 20 years.
Lang now lives at the Charlotte Hall Veterans Home, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, where he said he plans to live out his life — “unless I hit the Mega Millions,” he joked.
Lang has three children, four stepchildren and 19 grandchildren. He said he is spending this Christmas in the veterans’ home, where he will eat a nice meal served by volunteers.