A welcome homecoming for squadrons

Robin Crumley can read her newspaper again. Her husband and 88 other Air Force and Air National Guard members came home Tuesday from Iraq and other places in the Middle East.

“I have absolutely no idea what’s going on – on purpose,” Crumley said. “I tried to keep up with the news, but it was just too upsetting. So I just kind of kept the blinders on and looked out for the kids. Believe me, I had plenty to do.”

Crumley said this was the first time a deployment had separated her from her husband, General Fred Crumley III – whose rank is staff sergeant despite his given name. Most people know him as General, but she calls him Fred. Three-year-old General Fred Crumley IV calls him Daddy.

So does 12-year-old Mara Crumley. She got a big stuffed camel from her dad, and her younger brother got the toddler size.

There were plenty of young children among the 300 or so family members who assembled on the tarmac at Fairchild Air Force Base about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday to wait for their loved ones to file out of a chartered Omni Air International jetliner.

Amanda Wedin stood patiently at the back of the crowd. She figured her tandem stroller – one of several – would be in the way if she pushed to the front.

“Besides,” she said, “I’m tall. He’ll see me.”

Indeed, Sgt. Josh Wedin quickly made his way to the stroller and gently lifted out his 4-month-old daughter, Addy, who was born three days before he and about 130 other members of Fairchild’s 92nd Air Fueling Wing were deployed to Iraq and its vicinity. Amanda Wedin held their 19-month-old son, Clay, for the group hug.

Like shifting patterns in a kaleidoscope, families formed little knots all around the tarmac and then merged back into a sea of people who flowed into a hangar to turn in medical records and weapons, and to chat awhile before heading home.

“Hey, Daddy, you want to go to a concert tonight?” 5-year-old Ashton Holland asked his father, Staff Sgt. Blaine Holland.

Coincidentally, the sergeant had a ukulele strapped onto the side of his backpack as he moved through the crowd with his wife, Tiffany, and their children, who included a 2-year-old daughter, Riley, as well as Ashton.

“We can do anything we want to,” Blaine Holland told Ashton.

A ukulele concert probably wasn’t what either of them had in mind, but Holland said he learned about five songs on the instrument that he received as a gift during his deployment.

“My grandma got hold of a group called Ukuleles for Troops,” Holland said. “All of a sudden, everybody in the squadron is playing the ukulele.”

Holland was one of 64 homecoming members of the 92nd Civil Engineers Squadron. Also returning Tuesday were 21 members of the 92nd Communications Squadron, one from the 92nd Services Squadron and three from the 141st Medical Squadron of the Washington Air National Guard. Those in the 92nd Air Fueling Wing will get two weeks’ leave before returning to duty.

Inside the hangar, Staff Sgt. Crumley and dozens of other servicemen fumbled through their packs for the “1480” medical forms that would be their tickets for a night with their families.

“Remember when you made that for Daddy?” Robin Crumley asked their son when a bunch of homemade greeting cards and art projects spilled out of a box along with the medical form.

Robin Crumley said her separation from her husband was lightened by weekly phone calls and twice-daily e-mails. After some initial confusion, the couple settled into a routine of exchanging e-mails at morning and night, on opposite sides of an 11-hour time difference.

Sometimes, though, her husband’s duties would prevent him from e-mailing her, Robin Crumley said.

“Those were the scariest times,” she said.

On those days, she would have welcomed an e-mail with nothing more than a punctuation mark.

Robin Crumley said she “can’t imagine what it was like” for previous generations of military families who weren’t able to communicate regularly during deployments. Nor could she imagine what it would be like to have a husband in the Army, where deployments last 18 months.

“It’s hard, but you do what you’ve got to do,” she said.

Ask Sgt. Lorie Simpson about that. She got to come home early on April 2 so she could spend some time with her husband before he shipped out on May 9.

“They worked it out so I could spend a little time with him, so I’m happy,” Simpson said.

She turned out Tuesday with her 2-year-old son, Gavin, to welcome home other members of her squadron.