THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610230046
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: 67 lines
IT AIN'T BIG, but it's a place to burn a butt.
As the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt steams through an Atlantic Ocean night, smoking sailors and Marines brave a massive line to jaw and puff in the nicotine-drenched social hub known aboard ship as a ``smoking space.''
The line funnels people into a small room overlooking a giant elevator used to move warplanes from the hangar bay to the flight deck. The elevator faces the moving seas, black in the darkness.
Roosevelt was one of a few Navy ships to abolish smoking in 1993 - before learning that nicotine is a need that respects few orders. The command reversed the ban, and now permits crew members to smoke.
In select spaces.
Petty Officers 3rd Class Vincent Harelson and Michael Patterson and Airman Ben Barton cram with dozens of sailors into the space. The trio burning late-night cigarettes are members of an F-18 squadron that will embark the ship on its upcoming six-month deployment.
Harelson and Barton are both 23 years old. They're also aviation ordnancemen - the guys who keep their squadron's aircraft armed to the gills. To be recognized as such amid the flight deck bustle, they wear red jerseys.
``We load the bombs,'' says Harelson, after a hit from his Marlboro. ``We load the guns.''
Barton, also a Marlboro man, nods.
Patterson, 22, wears a green jersey. He's a technician, and smokes Winstons. He says, ``When the bombs don't go off I've got to find out why.''
The men say they have mixed feelings about the upcoming deployment. All three are married. It's going to be Harelson's second deployment.
``I'm going to miss my wife,'' he says They married in April, three years after meeting in a base club in Florida.
This will be Barton's first cruise, and he's looking forward to getting overseas. He's been married since February, though, and hates to leave home.
``She don't like me being gone so much,'' he says.
Patterson, who has a child due two weeks after the ship deploys, finishes his Winston and leaves. Hospitalman Brandi Nunn, 21, joins the group. Nunn's white flight deck jersey is marked, front and back, by soccer ball-sized red crosses.
``She takes care of our nicks and bumps,'' says Harelson.
To Nunn, Barton says, ``My arm's real sore.''
Nunn feels the appendage and offers impromptu diagnosis.
``That ain't sore,'' she says. ``Don't you guys work?''
The smoking space is as much a social pocket in this floating city as it is a place to quench the fires of nicotine addiction. Units - from squadron techs to Marines to ship's company sailors to khaki-clad officers and chiefs - are tightly knit. When they deploy, far from home and family, common ties bind tighter.
``We have to hang out together,'' says Barton. ``We all have to watch out for each other, too.''
Motioning to Nunn the medic, Barton adds, ``Except for when she has a needle in her hand.''
The red-shirted, Marlboro-smoking men laugh. Then leave.
``It's starting to kill me in here,'' says Barton as he and Harelson slip out through the tobacco haze, through fellow smokers still in the breathy act.
``Back to work.'' ILLUSTRATION: TAMARA VONINSKI COLOR PHOTO/The Virginian-Pilot
In the ship's smoking space, Airman Apprentice Caleb Blackburn,
center, gets a light from Airman Kenneth Schuffert, as Petty Officer
Third Class Mat Neel looks on.
KEYWORDS: U.S.S. THEODORE ROOSEVELT by CNB