Military Families

The sun clung to the horizon at four p.m. that November day in Alaska. From my office, I quickly did the calculations—if I left now, I would have just enough time to scoop up my children from daycare and fit in 20 minutes of sledding before…

June 9, 2022, started like any other day—I was up at five a.m. to get ready for work at Marine Aircraft Group 36 in Okinawa, Japan. At the end of my drive, I checked my phone and found a message from my good friend Teedha, my first flight…

“You know what’s crazy?” I said. “I’m turning the same age you were when you went to war.”“Oh wow,” my mom said, nodding thoughtfully from the couch. Then, “Wait, you’ll be 35?”I laughed from where I reclined on the floor, stretching my…

Every family has their secrets. Some big, some small. One of ours was that Yia Yia was a bit crazy. And where to begin: One could point to her sudden and animated outbursts of anger in awkward places. Her decades of pill popping that made…

Before Alex Ortiz’s wife gave birth to their son, she left the couple’s Caribbean home and traveled some 1,600 miles to Rhode Island, where she had family, to deliver the baby. Ortiz had grown up in Puerto Rico before he joined the Army,…

This is Part II of a two-part story. Read Part I. My mother had told me that Dad handled payroll for his ship, the USS Hughes, and its sister ship, the USS Hammann. I imagined that he had somehow sailed through the Battle of Midway…

Editors note: This is Part I of a Two Part Story. I wanted nothing more than to be on a boat with my dad, motoring around the dazzling blue waters off the coast of Massachusetts while he taught me how to work the gears, set an anchor,…

At first glance, the home mortgage advertisements, sent to some 10,000 customers in May 2016, looked as if they came from the Department of Veterans Affairs: a blue seal with the words “Veterans Administration” above a prominent “VA,”…

For the longest time, I didn’t look forward to the holidays the way a dad of three ought to. I once thought it was because I was raised on little extravagance, especially with respect to Christmas and gifts in general.But after an evening…

A couple of months after Spc. Vanessa Guillén disappeared on April 22, 2020, former Army Pfc. Krysta Alaniz protested the seeming lack of action on the military’s part. With her chocolate-brown eyes, sleek dark hair, and heart-shaped face,…