THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610230045
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: 155 lines
MUCH OF THE SHIP still sleeps, but the flight deck teems with activity. Under eerie yellow lights, aircraft are moved by men who look like action figures from the bridge, the ship's eye, decks above the launching platform.
It is just past halfway through the 4-to-8 watch and another day aboard the carrier Theodore Roosevelt is about to begin. A boatswain's mate, Petty Officer 3rd Class Jason Thomas of Chesapeake, stands near a microphone wired to the ship's main communication system - 1MC - which will soon bring the sound of reveille to every space throughout the massive carrier. Covering more than four acres, the Roosevelt is easily as large as a handful of city blocks.
Thomas's red hair and moustache are lost to the dark as pulls a boatswain's pipe from his left breast pocket. The pipe, about the size of a straight-razor blade, is tied to a knotted lanyard Thomas made himself when he became a boatswain three years ago.
Thomas places the microphone behind his back - you don't want it too close to the pipe, he explains, because you could hurt the 1MC speakers - and holds down a button.
He puts the pipe to his lips.
He blows two long, loud tones. Piping is a language of long and short calls. Reveille is a very long call. It is not a polite nudge from sleep. He puts the microphone to his lips and calls:
``Reveille, reveille. All hands on deck. Heave out. Trice up. Reveille.''
Below, in his rack, Master Chief Dean R. Leonard hears the tone. He had been awake since 4:45 a.m., when a plane landed loudly on the flight deck, jarring him from sleep.
Leonard, 51, had been trying to squeeze out another hour of shut-eye. Now, he's awake and thinking. He has a wife and four grown children. His wife still lives in Florida, and even when the ship is in port in Norfolk, they only manage to see each other on alternate weekends.
Before Roosevelt deploys again, he will leave.
Leonard will become the command master chief aboard a much smaller ship, eventually to be homeported in Florida. When he is the senior enlisted man aboard the Scott, Leonard will see more of his wife.
It will be busy day for Leonard and his men up on that noisy flight deck.
On the enlisted mess decks, Petty Officer 2nd Class John Wilson eats breakfast. He is a ``troubleshooter'' by trade - the last guy on the flight deck to check a plane before it launches.
Wilson, 28, has been in the Navy for 10 years. This morning he eats scrambled eggs, ham, pancakes. He drinks milk.
Your learn the tricks of mess deck survivalism in a decade. Sometimes he puts ice in his cup to cool the milk, but not today. The milk is cool. Which is fortunate. The ice machine doesn't have any ice in it.
Chief Joseph Howard wakes up. The upcoming deployment will be his fifth - his third aboard the Roosevelt. He likes the travel. Howard is single. He isn't ugly. Why stay home?
He is in the middle of a good career. He was once Roosevelt's sailor of the year, and has recently been selected to become an officer. Today, however, he's one of many Roosevelt chiefs with a lot of paperwork to do.
He gets out of his rack. Another day.
Lt. Alan Dunston, 32, sits in flight deck control over a table-sized mockup of Roosevelt's flight deck. He is the night aircraft handling officer, one of a few ``handlers'' aboard the carrier. As long as he's on watch, that means he's in charge of tracking all aircraft in the hangar bays and on the flight deck. He's been up for 14 hours.
On the bridge, Petty Officer 3rd Class Tommy Edwards, 20, and Seaman Ty Sharpe, 23, plot the Roosevelt's course on a navigation table. North is 000. East is 090. South is 180. West is 270. The course is 115, southeast, headed away from North Carolina.
Both men are pulling the 4-to-8.
Edwards points to the chart.
``There's Cherry Point right here,'' the Newport News resident says. ``And there's Cape Hatteras. We're 100 miles off the coast.''
The men speak of the Roosevelt's late-night collision, which had happened two days before, damaging the ship's stern.
``You never think something like that could happen to Theodore Roosevelt,'' says Sharpe. The young San Diego native lives aboard the carrier, even when it is in port.
So does Airman Apprentice Giovanni J. Lozano, 20, who is deep in a project as reveille sounds.
Lozano, his blue sleeves rolled up, waxed the tiled deck outside the ship's meteorological office, where he works.
He's a weather guy.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Pedrito Queeman wakes up in the berthing he shares with 210 sailors. He has a flowery blue comforter on his rack, and uses his own pillow. In the old days, you used Navy issue. Period. Times have changed. At 37, Queeman has been in 19 years. He finds his wire-rimmed glasses. He gets up for work.
In the captain's administrative office, Petty Officer 3rd Class Jason A. Anders sits at a desk. A plastic coffee cup and a copy of the ship's daily newspaper rest on the desk. Anders watches ``Star Trek'' on the office television. The program is aired by TRTV, the ship's closed-circuit television system, from a control room where a night watch has just cued and aired the day's episode.
But the main show in the officers' ``dirty shirt'' wardroom is Seaman Apprentice Mark Docteur, a 20-year-old mess cook. He has been up all night, and is working the line near a stifling grill. In a white chef's hat and a sweaty T-shirt, Docteur cooks omelets to order for the air wing officers, most in flight deck jerseys, or ``dirty shirts.''
On the bridge, Petty Officer 3rd Class Robert Bacon, the boatswain's mate at the helm, keeps a steady hand on a wooden wheel. He hopes to return to his wife and daughter in Virginia Beach before the deployment is complete. He is waiting for orders that may save him from six months of separation.
At 26, Bacon joined the Navy to become a corpsman. A recruiter told him entering the apprenticeship program was the quickest way to get there. That wasn't quite the truth. Three years later, halfway through the 4-to-8, here Bacon stands, holding Roosevelt's steering wheel rather than a medical record.
Down a few twisting passageways, just off the blue-tiled limited-access area of the deck directly below the flight deck, Petty Officer 2nd Class Cheryl Sorensen, 35, nears the end of her shift. She started work a dozen hours ago. She tries to stay awake. She will soon make sure someone wakes up the admiral who commands the battle group.
Another rear admiral, Ronald L. Christenson, sleeps in the manner of a ship's captain - when he can fit it in. This morning, it happens, reveille and a lull in Roosevelt's activity coincide. After a night of flight operations and war games, he dozes, his ship in the hands of the officer of the deck. Christenson has been eligible to wear an admiral's star since Oct. 1, but he has not yet pinned it on. He will soon transfer to Guam, where he will break in his star, but Christenson wants to finish his tour here wearing the collar device befitting a ship's captain.
So a pair of silver eagles perches on the collar tips of the khaki shirt he will wear when he wakes.
Lt. Michael Hutchens of Chesapeake continues his watch on the bridge. As officer of the deck, Hutchens is responsible for ensuring that the Roosevelt continues steaming safely toward a point on a chart, cutting through the soft dark before sunrise.
Under Hutchens' watch, the bridge stays dark, even past reveille.
``The lights stay off until the sun comes up,'' explains Thomas, his pipe tucked back away, the 1MC microphone hung back up. He stands near Bacon, his fellow boatswain's mate.
``Quartermaster,'' says Bacon to the men at the navigation chart, ``What time does the sun come up?''
``Depends on what time you want the sun to come up,'' one answers, and some of the men laugh.
Hutchens checks the plan of the day, a source of much knowledge for the crew. ``6.41,'' he says.
Theodore Roosevelt is awake. MEMO: John-Henry Doucette, who served aboard the Theodore Roosevelt,
left the Navy six months ago and is now enrolled at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: TAMARA VONINSKI COLOR PHOTOS/The Virginian-Pilot
Crewman prepare planes for the elevator that will take them from the
hangar deck to the flight deck.
On the bridge, observation crews gear up for early morning flight
operations.
Colored jerseys designate each crew member's role in flight
operations. by CNB