Women relying on one another
Groton — It’s a sunny, mild day in late November, and Hailey Carr, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, is on the roof of the house of her friend Kelsey Smith. She’s convinced Smith, not a fan of heights, to string Christmas lights, a task that normally Smith’s husband would help with. But he hasn’t been home in months.
“I have other friends that would help me out, but it’s not the same as friends who are going through the same thing as you at the same time,” said Smith, a 32-year-old from Washington state, who is living in Groton while her husband is stationed at the Naval Submarine Base. Josh Smith is a sonar technician on the fast-attack submarine USS Minnesota, as is Carr’s husband.
Over the past six months, the wives of sailors serving aboard the Minnesota, which returned Wednesday from a deployment, have relied on one another in circumstances both big and small.
They’ve babysat each other’s children, spent holidays together, shared meals, picked each other up from the airport. When Carr’s son Chris, 6, had ear surgery, Smith left a care package at the door with soup and Jell-O. When Smith’s daughter Hadley, 2, forgot her beloved “Blanky” at home while visiting family in Washington for the holidays, Carr mailed it across the country to them. Time usually spent with their husbands has been spent together.
“They’ve become our family,” said Smith.
Kelsey and Josh, 31, got together in their senior year of high school in Washington and married after their freshman year at Central Washington University. The couple, who’ve been married nearly 10 years, have a 6-year-old son, Colton, as well as Hadley.
Hailey, 27, and Chris, 26, met at the Pennsylvania Farm Show as sophomores in high school. They’ve been married almost five years, and have one son, Chris, 6.
The submarine force, made up of 20,000 active-duty sailors, is a close-knit community. That’s what attracted Josh Smith to serve on submarines instead of surface ships, and that tight community extends to their families as well, Kelsey Smith said.
The average age of a submariner is 29. More than half are married, and about a third have children under age 18. The hardships associated with submarine deployments are different for the families left behind than for those carrying out missions hundreds of feet below the ocean’s surface.
Each submarine has a Family Readiness Group assigned to it that helps assist the families. The group plans events such as halfway night — a themed party where the wives celebrate deployment being halfway done — and disseminate information about the boat, such as when they make a port call. Carr, whose husband has deployed on submarines before, is the group’s current president.
The secret nature of their work means their families know little about what they do, especially when deployed. Stealth is a submarine’s most important asset. When doing missions, submarines can go 45 to 60 days without communication. On deployment, the sub’s leadership is diligent, screening all incoming emails to ensure operational security isn’t compromised. They also don’t want sailors distracted by news from home.
Given the sparse communication between sailors and family, when one wife gets an email, she’ll notify the others, and they’ll rush to see if they’ve heard from their husbands, too. Smith’s and Carr’s husbands work in the same division, as does the husband of another of their close friends. Sometimes the husbands included stories of each other in their emails — pranks they pulled, a funny night out while in port. Josh Smith went 10 days without showering to win a bet. His prize: A can of Dr. Pepper.
While contact with their husbands is sporadic, Smith, Carr and two other Navy wives are in a group chat on their phones so they are in near-constant contact. The phone buzzes. One of them is having a hard day and needs to get some things off her chest. Or they have a question involving their kids. Have you heard from your husband recently?
“I tell him everything,” Smith said of her husband. “I can still email him, but it’s not the same.”
The wives have been friends since before their husbands deployed, but they’ve become closer, in part because they’ve come to rely on one another.
When Carr was deciding whether to go forward with ear surgery and genetic testing for her son, she told them what worried her and asked for their advice. Smith was worried about her daughter’s speech development so she asked one of the wives, a teacher, what she thought.
When that same wife couldn’t get home during a winter storm, she came to Smith’s house with her baby to wait for the roads to be cleared. Carr came over with a phone charger so that when she went back out she could contact them if she got stuck. When she finally reached her house and found out the power was out, she returned to Smith’s and stayed the rest of the weekend. An impromptu girls’ night ensued.
After one of the wives was involved in a car accident with the kids in the car, Carr rushed to the scene to help, went in the ambulance, and waited in the hospital.
“We’re each other’s go-to people,” Carr said.