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thedrifter
02-14-03, 07:15 AM
02/14/2003


Hugs, kisses and goodbyes
By ERIC STEINKOPFF
DAILY NEWS STAFF
Sgt. Kevin Cox’s wife won’t fret over her husband being thousands of miles from home this Valentine’s Day.



Venencia Cox knows the score. And she has bigger worries about his absence.



“I knew exactly what I was getting into, because I left the Marine Corps in 1996,” the 29-year-old former Marine truck driver said. “I can relate to what he’s going through.”



What she didn’t know was that she would be pregnant while her husband was in the Middle East.



“Now I’m going to have a child and he won’t be here,” Venencia said. “Finding out that he was leaving was the hardest part. The timing just seems to be off.”



The story is perhaps familiar to many of the 18,000 Marines and sailors who, like Kevin Cox, have deployed or will leave soon. Most Camp Lejeune troops spent Christmas and New Year’s Day at home with family and friends.



But as tensions heighten between Iraq and America, more service members and their spouses are spending this Valentine’s Day preparing for or separated by a potential war.



The family way



Venencia planned to head home to be with family for the baby’s delivery, but until then she wants to use her Corps experience as a key wife, supplying information to spouses of Marines in Kevin’s platoon — Light Corrective Maintenance Platoon, Alpha Company, 2nd Maintenance Battalion, 2nd Force Service Supply Group from Camp Lejeune.



The Coxes’ relationship has weathered numerous separations, including Kevin’s recent six months on a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.



“My advice to the wives is to turn to one another because there are others here going through the same thing,” Venencia said. “Being close to the base helps to fix pay problems, and they need to keep the lines of communication open with spouses to make it work.”



Kevin, 26, missed the last three Christmases because of deployments. He can pack, unpack and replace lost gear, but he can never replace lost time.



“Now, she’s going to have a child and I won’t be here,” he said. “Letters will probably be the only thing we can count on, because e-mail and morale phones will be limited.”



Venencia will document what he misses.



“There will be plenty of videotapes for him when he comes back,” she said.



Headed out again



Sgt. Eric Hazelwood had just returned from a deployment when he was told to get ready to leave again.



That was hard for the 27-year-old and his wife of three years, Rebecca, 24. While he is gone, Rebecca and the couple’s daughters, 2-year old Sierra and 3-year old Alexis, will stay with family in Kent, Ohio.



The temporary move is a financial burden because the Hazelwoods could not break the lease on their rental home. Still, Rebecca could not bear the thought of being a single parent.



“It’s just too hard to stay down here without him,” she said. “There is too much time to sit here and be by myself.”



Eric is a telephone switchboard technician from Henderson, Ky. He is assigned to 2nd Maintenance Battalion, 2nd Force Service Support Group, which returned with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit in August.



As a seasoned Marine with deployments under his belt, he knows his trip to the Middle East is not a regular training mission or a typical patrol to the Mediterranean Sea.



“It’s probably more difficult because you don’t know when you’re leaving or how long you’ll be gone,” Eric said.



“It’s very hard,” Rebecca said. “We just got settled and he’s being taken away again. It was easier last time because Sierra was so young that she didn’t know he was gone, and Alexis just knew that he was at work for a long time.



“Now they’re both worried whenever he leaves for work. They keep asking, ‘Daddy’s coming back, right?’”



Marine and Marine



He’s going. She’s not.



That’s the story for Sgt. Christopher Shandera, 25, a mechanic from Houston assigned to 2nd Combat Engineer Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, and his wife, Sgt. Amy Shandera, 23, a mechanic from Minier, Ill., assigned to Heavy Maintenance Company, 2nd Maintenance Battalion, 2nd Force Service Support Group.



The couple met at Camp Johnson while they were students at the basic diesel mechanic school in 1998.



“They told us that it wouldn’t last two years, and I still have a master sergeant who checks up on me every year,” Amy said of their marriage.



The Shanderas’ main concern should they both be deployed is who would care for their children, 2-year old son Cody and 10-month-old daughter Madison.



“We spent our first year apart,” Amy said.



For now, she will stick to the kids’ daily routines and communicate with her husband in the Middle East any way she can.



“We’ve already decided to keep in touch with care packages,” she said. “If we can keep in touch with e-mail, that’s fine, but we know not to expect it.”



“She knows what to expect, but she doesn’t have family here to help out,” Christopher said.



Amy will depend on other spouses, just as her mother did when Amy’s father was in the Army.



“I remember a lot of the Army wives helping out when my mom went to work, especially when we were in Germany,” she said.



Amy has plans for barbecues, dinners and movies with other spouses.



“I believe that the wives will pull together to help out,” she said. “We need adult conversation outside of work.”



Hugs and kisses



For Cpl. Ernie Rivera, 22, deployments aren’t new. As an air delivery specialist assigned to Beach and Terminal Operations Company, 2nd Transportation Support Battalion, 2nd Force Service Support Group, he has been sent overseas several times in the past three years and has spent a year in Okinawa, Japan.



But the logistics of moving everything from work here to a Middle East base have meant a lot of time away from his wife Terry, 22. Ernie and Terry were high school sweethearts in California and married less than a year ago.



“We were working 18 days straight in shifts around the clock to get our shop packed up,” Ernie Rivera said. “All I did was work, eat and sleep. That was kind of hard, but now we have everything ready so we can have some time for ourselves.”



During that time, the couple prepared Terry for her trip home to the Los Angeles area. The couple was lucky; their landlord let them out of their lease.



Terry likes the Jacksonville area because it’s quiet and not as rowdy as Los Angeles. But because she is four months pregnant and because nearly all the wives from her husband’s platoon are headed back home, she decided to leave, too.



“It’s a little sad because it’s our first child and he’s going to be gone,” she said.



“But it hasn’t sunk in for me yet. Every day when he comes home, I try to act the same, but I think I’m getting on his nerves because I just want to hug, cuddle and be with him.”



Contact Eric Steinkopff at esteinkopff@jdnews.com or 353-1171, Ext. 236.



Sempers,

Roger