Hugs, Tears, Liftoff

BROOKSVILLE - Warrant Officer Brad Freeman feasted at Carrabba's on Thursday night.

He had a heart to heart talk with his two daughters, Cassy and Carson, emphasizing how important it was that they help their mother Diane while he was gone.

And he leaned over, put his head on his wife's belly and said a few words to his unborn baby.

"Which made me cry," Diane recalled, and remembering the moment made her cry, too.

At 8:30 Friday morning, Brad Freeman suited up, climbed into the cockpit of one of eight Blackhawk helicopters parked on the tarmac behind the Florida National Guard Aviation Support Facility off Spring Hill Drive.

The engines roared to life. The rotors blurred.

At 9 a.m. sharp, Freeman - piloting the lead helicopter - lifted off, and the others fell into a staggered formation.

Diane Freeman wiped more tears as she and 7-year-old Carson waved until the giant machines shrunk into the clear blue sky. They waved again as the formation made another pass a few minutes later.

The Freemans were among more than 100 family and friends who got in one last round of hugs and kisses before a yearlong separation from their loved ones in Charlie Company 1st Battalion 244th and 1st Battalion 111th Aviation regiments.

The unit, comprised of 84 members including pilots, mechanics and other support staff, is slated to spend two months at Fort Sill, Okla. for training before heading to Iraq, where they will provide transportation for combat troops, supplies and VIPs.

"No matter how much you prepare, you're never ready," said Brooksville resident Donna Rodrigues as her husband, Sgt. Chad Rodrigues, held the couple's two-year-old son Jonathon just before leaving Friday morning. "You're never ready to say goodbye to the ones you love."

Rodrigues said she planned to take the next year "one day at a time," looking forward to the two-week leave that her husband will probably get during the course of the year.

"It's all you can do," she said.

Chad Rodrigues, a crew chief who has been to Iraq before, said the days are easier because "they keep us pretty busy over there." Active hands help ease a homesick heart, he said.

But after the workday ends, "there are a lot of sleepless nights," he said.

The unit got a sense on Friday of the support system rooting for them here.

Students at Chocachatti Elementary arranged themselves in a "USA" formation along Powell Road for the Guard members to see on their way north. Their neighbors at Nature Coast High School also gathered outside to wave goodbye.

And at Anderson Snow Park in Spring Hill, residents dressed in red spelled out the words "Thank You."

Back on the tarmac, after the Blackhawks had disappeared, family and friends of Spc. Curt Guinan started to accept the fact that their 20-year-old soldier was gone.

Guinan, of Homosassa, signed up three years ago with dreams of becoming a pilot, said his parents, Randy and Sara Standard. The Standards said Guinan knew at that time, as the war in Iraq raged, that the day would surely come when he would be called to serve there.

They said the fact that Guinan is following his dream makes it a little easier to accept that doing so requires him to spend a year away from them in a dangerous place.

"He's very, very happy," Sara Standard said.

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandotoday.com.