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USS Enterprise comes home
By SONJA BARISIC
Associated Press Writer
11/10/01
NORFOLK, Va. — The first U.S. aircraft carrier to report for combat duty in the war on terrorism docked Saturday morning after nearly 7 months at sea, greeted by thousands of cheering relatives and friends.
The USS Enterprise's thrumming engines competed with Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A.'' blasting from loudspeakers as the crowd chanted "U.S.A, U.S.A.'' Some waved American flags and signs that read: "Welcome Home Daddy'' or "We're Proud of Our Boys.''
Relatives tried to hush children who grew impatient as cranes took nearly an hour to put three brows in place alongside the ship that would allow the 5,000 sailors on board to disembark.
The crew, in their dress blues, lined the decks of the carrier. Some used their cell phones to talk to loved ones waiting on the pier.
"It's great to be back home. I couldn't wait,'' said Petty Officer 3rd Class Will Tabocol, 32, from Hilo, Hawaii. "I'm going to do nothing for the next two weeks except play with my new baby.''
Tabocol's daughter Kalea was born two months ago. He saw her for the first time when he stepped off the ship Saturday.
Petty Officer Kinte Horton, 22, of San Francisco, said that it was extremely difficult to be away from home when the terrorist attacks occurred. "I was safer than she was,'' Horton said of his wife Trina.
"I wanted to go home but I knew I couldn't. We're the military. We had to do our part and respond to the cowardly acts done to us,'' he said.
Trina Horton, 30, waited on the windy pier for more than four hours. "Here they come,'' she squealed as the first crew members walked off the ship.
"I'm very happy because he's home but I"m also sad because of all the things that have happened,'' said Trina Horton, who gave birth to son Zechariah two weeks after her husband deployed.
About 90 crew members became fathers while they were away on deployment.
The carrier became a base for launching the earliest air strikes against Afghanistan, with its planes dropping 862,000 pounds of munitions during two weeks in October.
Sixty-eight members of the air wing from the USS Enterprise returned to Oceana Naval Air Station on Friday.
Also Friday, four E-2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft and two C-2 Greyhound cargo aircraft from the Enterprise air wing returned to Norfolk. Fourteen other aircraft flew home to bases in Jacksonville, Fla. and Whidbey Island, Wash.