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For Navy wives in Saratoga County, deployments, frequent moves are just part of the lifestyle
Jul 04, 2010
Paola Martin holds down the fort with sons Jaydon, 1, and Landon, 4, as her husband, Petty Officer Brandon Martin, below, prepares for deployment that will keep him away for seven months. (ERICA MILLER/The Saratogian)
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Turning onto Quiet Harbor Road you might be pulling into any cookie-cutter housing development — quiet rows of well-kept homes on tree-lined streets and children laughing in their yards and on playgrounds. The families that live in these houses, however, all have something very distinct in common: at least one member of each family is a member of the U.S. Navy stationed at the nearby Naval Support Unit.
They are a tight-knit group, despite the fact that families regularly arrive and depart from the neighborhood, based on the whims of the U.S. Navy.
Jennifer Bennett has lived in Saratoga Springs with her husband, Petty Officer Kristopher Bennett, and their two children, 4-year-old Skyler and 2-year-old Kristopher, for about 15 months. Even though they haven’t received any word that a move is coming, Bennett said she is always in “prepare-to-move mode.”
Her daughter has already lived in three states — Hawaii, Maine and New York — and her son in two.
With her husband assigned to Saratoga Springs “this is the most normal his job gets,” Bennett said. The worst part is “shift duty” when he is assigned to work late-night or overnight shifts, but there are none of the months-long submarine deployments they’ve experienced in other parts of the country.
April Bermingham and her husband, Chief Petty Officer Paul Bermingham, have been stationed in Saratoga for about for years. From her perspective, travel is one of the perks of their military life. They lived in San Diego and New Hampshire before being sent back to her native Saratoga, which is where the couple met. Next spring they will move to Guam with their two children — they have a 2-year-old, Magnus, and Bermingham is expecting another son in the fall. They were given several options and chose Guam as their next move because of the opportunity to travel around the exotic locale.
“One of the biggest pros was that we could expose our children to different cultures and have them be a little more worldly,” Bermingham said. “It’s something we wanted to do while our children are small.”
The cycle of moving around factored into the Berminghams decision to have children. “We decided to wait until we were going to be somewhere for any length of time before we had kids,” she said. For the first two years of their marriage they lived in San Diego and Bermingham’s husband was out to sea. She only saw him for four months during the two years. “I knew what i was getting into, so it wasn’t a surprise,” she said. E-mail was the best way to connect, but even though they wrote to each other most days, because he was stationed on a submarine the e-mails would come in periodic batches of 50 or more.
“Since he’s on a submarine he would be down for a month or two at a time so there would be no contact during that time,” she said.
Bermingham’s husband hasn’t been deployed since they’ve had children, but she said that day is probably coming.
“It’ll be different, but luckily I’ve gone through it before we had kids so i know what to expect,” she said. “I don’t try to worry about things that are not under my control.”
The last time Bennett’s husband was deployed, her daughter was 8 1/2 months old. During that six-month period, her husband missed a lot, she said.
“Skyler said ‘daddy’ the day before he left. When he came home, she was starting to walk,” Bennett said. He hasn’t had a deployment since their son was born. The next time he is, which she knows will be on the horizon eventually, “is going to be different.”
The frequent moving is familiar to Bennett. “My dad was military, so I moved a lot,” she said. “It’s the only lifestyle I’ve ever known.”
“I always expect we’ll have a month notice (before a move),” she said. “I never feel like the bottom’s dropping out.”
Two weeks ago Paola Martin spent an afternoon watching her sons, 4-year-old Landon and 1-year-old Jaydon, play in the backyard while piles of bins and boxes were visible in her living room through a sliding glass door. Martin and her husband, Petty Officer Brandon Martin, moved last week to their fourth Naval assignment. After spending three years in Saratoga Springs, the family is now stationed in San Diego.
Martin said she was sad to leave Saratoga, but it comes with the territory. She and Brandon were high school sweethearts and when he considered enlisting, “it was a decision we both made.”
The biggest challenge on Martin’s horizon is her husband’s upcoming deployment, his first since enlisting. He will be away for seven months.
Martin said she is “freaking out” about the prospect of her husband being gone for so long.
“(The kids) won’t see him for seven months. Seven months is a long time when they’re this little,” she said.
Her husband is worried too: “He’s just worried about missing out on so much.”
Bennett said that in her experience, missing out on family time is the hardest part for the deployed men and women. Her daughter’s first Christmas and first birthday both occurred during her husband’s deployment, but were “like any other day” for her.
“Times like that are harder for the guys than us,” she said, because they can spend their whole day thinking about what they’re missing with no way to communicate with their family.
She made a habit of sending her husband CDs full of pictures of their daughter while he was away.
What helps the wives get through is the camaraderie they find in Naval housing communities or near Naval bases, they said.
“They become your second family,” Martin said. Even on “shore duty,” as they refer to assignments like Saratoga Springs, the wives lean on each other to get through the long nights when their husbands are working late shifts. Dinners, support groups, and play groups for the children all “help get your mind off of (your husband),” Martin said.
Still, “there are days when I’m just waiting for him to get home.”
Theresa Mejia and her husband, Petty Officer Jeff Mejia, have three children — 8-year-old Arianna, 6-year-old Kiara, and 3-year-old Madden — and have lived in Saratoga for about three years.
Wherever they’re stationed, “our friends become family, because that’s all we have,” she said.
The longest period she’s gone without being in contact with Jeff was 37 days, she said, while he was stationed in Washington and regularly deployed on submarines.
“You worry that they’re missing things,” she said. But she never worries about his safety. “I don’t have time to worry about that.”
Bennett said being a Navy wife is a small blessing while the country is engaged in two desert wars.
“I actually don’t know how some of the Marine wives and the Army wives do it,” she said. “I’ve never been scared for his safety … He’s safer on a sub than we are here.”
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