LITTLE ROCK — Capt. Barry Weaver has diaper duty to catch up on, and he’s happy to give his wife, Tara, a break.
For the past four months, Weaver, a U.S. Air Force pilot, has been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan with 158 other airmen from the 53rd Airlift Squadron at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville.
He’s been gone for nearly half of his 9-month-old daughter’s life. On Christmas morning, he and the other airmen returned to their families.
They were greeted byabout 150 family members, friends and Air Force colleagues who were waiting with cookies, doughnuts, coffee, cider and hot chocolate. As each airman entered the deployment facility’s reception area, the crowd shouted and applauded. Several people, including high-ranking officers, wore red and white Santa hats or reindeer antlers. Some in the crowd held up signs welcoming their loved ones home.
Several women leapt from the crowd into the arms of the men in their lives. The couples smothered each other with kisses while cameraflashes flickered all around them as people captured the emotional moments.
“This is my third deployment - our second as a married couple and first as parents,” Barry Weaver said as he cooed at his daughter London and held her close to his chest. “It’s great to be back. They did everything they could to get us here. I remember all those who are still over there, but I’m happy to be over here.”
Tara Weaver said she knows her husband was only gone for four months, the blink of an eye when compared with some military de-ployments, but it has felt like a lot longer.
“Being by myself with a 4-month old, this has made me really admire single moms. I don’t know how they do it,” she said while waiting for her husband. After a round of hugs and kisses, she said she’s looking forward to having a couple weeks off mom duty.
“I’ve got a lot of diapers to catch up on,” he said, making them both laugh.
Weaver said they planned to celebrate Christmas today with the spouses of some of his fellow airmen who are still deployed.
Some families, however, had no intention of waiting to celebrate.
Clad in pajamas; robes imprinted with basketballs, footballs, soccer balls and baseballs; and oversized bear paw slippers on their feet, Aiden Preston, 6, and his brother Dane, 4, eagerly awaited their dad, Lt. Corey Preston.
“We didn’t want to start Christmas morning without daddy,” their mother, Melissa Preston, said, while holding 1-year-old Gabriel on her hip. “When he gets here, we’re going to hang out for a while, then go home and open presents.”
Calling them her “little monkeys” as they chased each other and wrestled all around her, Preston said she was impressed by her boys’ desire to wait for their father to open Christmas presents.
“They’ve been poking holes in them and shaking them trying to figure out what’s inside the boxes. They actually agreed to wait. I was really surprised,” she said, stopping to rein in Dane, who was preparing to retaliate against his big brother who had made him slip and fall on the concrete floor.
Lt. Patrick Burke, a flight navigator, said that while he had just gotten off a long flight, he was looking forward to another plane ride.
“I’m flying to Chicago to see my family in about three hours,” he said. “I’m hoping I can get home. I don’t know if I’ll be delayed or not. I haven’t had time to check.”
Burke has already experienced a bad weather delay. Blizzards that blanketed parts of the east coast led to the troops arriving on Christmas instead of two days earlier as originally planned.
Despite it being Christmas Day, the number of people at the deployment center to greet them was impressive, said Bob Oldham, chief of public affairs at the base and a retired airman himself.
“We would much rather have done this on the 23rd, but this is still a good reception,” Oldham said. “It’s so important to recognize the sacrifices of our men and women returning from war zones. I’ve been in this position myself, and it just makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside to come home and see all these people cheering and clapping for you.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 12/26/2009