THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 15, 1995 TAG: 9511160483
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: HOLLY & BOBBY
CHAPTER 4: SEPARATE LIVES
They say a marriage can survive anything if it survives a six-month
deployment. Holly and Bobby White know. For six months, they opened up
their home, their letters and their thoughts as the carrier Theodore
Roosevelt sailed an ocean away.
SOURCE: BY KERRY DEROCHI, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines
Holly White felt guilty.
Her husband was stuck on an aircraft carrier thousands of miles away and she couldn't muster the energy to write him a letter. Or talk on the phone.
When Bobby called her the night before, she'd been in bed, asleep. The conversation hadn't gone well. He sounded depressed and she kept asking him what was wrong. He got mad and hung up early.
Why was talking so hard?
All he had asked was what she and the boys were doing. He wanted to hear stories from home. He needed to talk about normal things.
Holly didn't want to describe the swimming trips in Virginia Beach, the weekends she and some friends watched movie after movie.
``It wasn't because I didn't want to tell him, I just didn't want him to think we were having fun without him,'' Holly said. ``I wanted him to know we missed him, too.''
By the end of the call, Holly was crying.
She knew how much they needed each other to get through this six-month deployment. They'd talked about how important it was to stay connected.
Yet they had never seemed more apart.
During the first few weeks, Holly had written long, romantic letters with ``Love You'' scrawled across the envelopes and the words ``Angel Baby'' on the first page.
She'd told Bobby of the emptiness she felt when he left and how hard it was to see the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower come home after being relieved by the Roosevelt. She told him about the time Robby fell into the pool during swim lessons and the day Cody climbed into another woman's dressing room at the $7 Store.
But now it seemed like she never found the time to write.
She spent hours each week filling and assembling the six pages of announcements as editor of the ship's newsletter. She had joined a committee overseeing the signs and banners for the homecoming.
She worked 8 1/2 hours a day, with 30 minutes for lunch. She took Robby and Cody to school in the morning and picked them up in the afternoon. When they got sick, she took them to the doctor.
She didn't mind, she told Bobby. She loved him and the boys.
But he'd have to understand.
She was busy. She had to be. It was the way to get through. She had to stay focused. He had to trust her.
``He has to know I'm going to take care of stuff here,'' Holly said. ``I have to trust him, that the pay will be there.
``I don't think there are a lot of marriages that can take it. If people can't trust each other, forget it. That's the only thing you've got.''
Trust can seem be elusive when there's an ocean between you.
A lapse in letters can be suspicious. A tone of voice can make you mad.
It was the hardest part of a deployment. Holly and Bobby were out of sync for the first time in their five-year marriage.
Like most couples, they had their share of arguments. She liked to sleep late and was happy ordering pizza for dinner.
Bobby was more demanding. He wanted home-cooked meals and a clean house. He was often critical of Holly and always too hard on himself.
The two had met in high school, in a small town about 50 miles north of Little Rock, Ark. Holly thought Bobby was cute. He liked her smile. On their first date, they went to see the movie ``The Princess Bride.'' She cried. He didn't.
In 1989, Bobby, who'd been delivering pizzas, enlisted in the Navy. He wanted to leave Arkansas and see more of the world, and he wanted Holly to go with him.
The next spring, they were married in a round, glass chapel in the woods. They were both 19.
``It was the happiest day of my life,'' Holly would later write.
The couple honeymooned in a resort in the mountains before moving to Connecticut, where Bobby reported for duty. He was assigned to a chaplain's staff at a submarine squadron at the New London Naval Submarine Base in Groton.
They rented an apartment nearby. Within a year, Holly was pregnant with Robby. Cody came 14 months later.
Holly and Bobby, the children of parents who served in the military, were aware of the tolls exacted on a young family.
Money was tight, the job demanding. The cost of deployment was high - missed birthdays and milestones. It was hard to relive a baby's first words. It was hard to pick up a marriage where it was left off.
This time, Holly knew the risk of separation. She was determined to cut the distance between them.
She'd tried to meet Bobby in July as part of a trip with a group of wives from the carrier Theodore Roosevelt. They were to meet their husbands in Rhodes, Greece.
Holly had called a loan service she and Bobby had used before and told them she needed $1,800 for the trip. No problem, she was told. That same week, Holly appeared on a videotape the wives were sending the husbands in time for Father's Day.
She told Bobby she was coming to see him.
``Don't worry about being able to find me,'' she told him, giggling. ``I'll be the one with the big smile on my face.''
Her trip was canceled three days later. When she arrived at the loan office to pick up the check, she realized the company had used half of the money to cover an outstanding balance on the previous loan.
She didn't know what to tell Bobby.
From that moment on, she knew she was on her own.
During the day, she kept busy with work and the boys. At night, when she got home from work, she stayed on the phone, filling the empty hours by talking to her mother and sister. On the weekends, she and the boys left the house and went to visit a friend in Virginia Beach.
``Life goes on,'' she told herself. ``I have to take care of me and the kids, because there's not anyone else left to do it.'' MEMO: Tomorrow: Stay busy, stay focused: Holly finds the freedom to keep
things together without Bobby.
ILLUSTRATION: GARY C. KNAPP
Cody, left, and Robby pitch in with the groceries as they work their
way throught the commissary. Life without Dad has developed its own
routines.
Does my family want to be with me? Am I placing too much emphasis on
a letter? Talked with Holly last night. I don't know if I should be
upset with her or not. To just come out and say she hasn't written
for a while. No foolin! Hope she's enjoying the mail I've sent her.
I tried to tell her I wasn't upset. She knows I am. - B.W., aboard
the Roosevelt
by CNB