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thedrifter
01-09-08, 07:50 AM
State trooper recounts naval adventure
By SUSAN ELZEY
Register & Bee staff writer
Wednesday, January 9, 2008


Virginia State Trooper Anna Dishman got the ride of her life recently when she traveled across the Atlantic Ocean on the U.S.S. Enterprise aircraft carrier.

Dishman, 26, was chosen to participate in the Navy program “Safety at Sea” that uses state troopers to reacquaint sailors and Marines returning to the United States after deployment at sea with the rules of the road.

“The Navy started the program with the state police in 1972 because they realized too many sailors and Marines were coming back without having driven for six months and there were high traffic fatalities,” Dishman said last week. “Since then, traffic fatalities have been reduced.”

Dishman was chosen for the job, but said she still has no idea how she was selected.

“I got a phone call that said, ‘Can you get a passport in two weeks? You’re going to Spain,’” Dishman said.

Congressman Virgil Goode’s office helped expedite her passport, and on Dec. 4, she was on a plane to Rota Naval Station in Spain. Dishman returned on Dec. 17.

“We flew out to the U.S.S. Enterprise and met it in the Atlantic Ocean,” she said. “It was awesome. There were no windows (on the plane). We were riding backwards and had no idea what was going on. Then, all of a sudden, you stop when the plane catches the cable on the ship.”

The second day on the Enterprise, Dishman got a little surprise when someone called out her name and she met a girl from Dry Fork, Sarah Hylton, who was her classmate in high school.

Then it was down to work, interspersed with some really neat experiences amid only a little apprehension.

Five or six times a day while Dishman was onboard, she gave presentations to the 18- to 25-year-olds and taught them Virginia laws that were new since they had been deployed in July, and reviewed basic driving skills and laws.

“I had to come up with my own presentations, so I used what I use for high school presentations,” Dishman explained. “They have a safety department on the ship that organized everything. I taught all over the ship - in a couple of classrooms and on the mess decks.”

Her accommodations were a two-person stateroom that she shared with a woman form Norfolk she hardly ever saw. It was noisy, though, Dishman said.

“We were on the deck below the flight deck, so when they launched or caught the planes, I got woken up,” she said. “A few mornings started at 5 a.m.”

The food was good, and Dishman said she made it a point to eat in every eating establishment on board, although she mostly ate in the officers’ mess hall since they were the ones showing her around.

Although the only boat Dishman had been on previously was on Smith Mountain Lake, she said she didn’t get seasick.

“It was a big ship, so it didn’t rock much,” Dishman said.

When she wasn’t giving presentations, the state trooper said she had time to fit in a few interesting experiences.

“I got to drive the ship for a few minutes, and I got to write a pilot a speeding ticket up on an F-18,” Dishman said. “They said he had broken the sound barrier.

“I got to meet the admiral and the ship’s commanders, and they let me go out and shoot a plane off. If I had stood up, I would have had my head taken off.”

She also got to spend one day in Spain before being flown out to the carrier.

Although Dishman traveled to Europe two times during high school and then did a mission trip to Egypt when she was in college, she said the trip on the aircraft carrier was “very high up in my life’s experiences.”

Contact Susan Elzey at selzey@registerbee.com or (434) 791-7991.

Ellie