Being From Watertown, Half A World Away

I'm realizing it's been just shy of a year since I last wrote in this thing. Moral of the story: the language courses in California don't get easier after some kind of “hump” in the middle, they just get progressively more difficult.

In any case, I finished. I graduated the course, was promoted to Petty Officer Third Class, and transferred out. I'm now in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which, to my mind at least, is by far the best place in the world to be stationed for three years.

Words will never do this place justice. It's an island steeped not only in beauty and magic, but in history, as well. I recently volunteered to help maintain the USS Missouri (since she's no longer in service, she lacks a crew to keep her decks clean, so there's regular volunteer days where we go and do our part-- it's how we “don't give up the ship”), which was really cool-- I ended up in parts of the ship not open to the public; particularly, the ship's superstructure, which we swept from top to bottom.

In any case, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Most notably, the attack on the Boston Marathon, which actually took place while I was home on leave in between duty stations. I was staying with my father in Waltham, and had just returned to his house after having lunch with a friend when I started seeing news on my Facebook about the blasts. It wasn't long before my phone was buzzing incessantly with texts and calls from shipmates in California, Georgia, Hawaii, and Maryland making sure I was okay. My sponsor in Hawaii and my prior command in California called to confirm that my family and I were all okay.

I was due to report that Friday (19APR), so on Thursday morning I flew out of Boston, and around the time I touched down back in California, I checked the news on my phone, to find out that a firefight had just started just blocks from where I grew up. I was fielding texts and calls again from concerned shipmates making sure I was alright, letting them know I was safely on the other side of the country. Still, I got very little sleep that night, glued to my Facebook and Twitter, trying to follow what was going on from California. The next morning, I got on the plane bound for Hawaii, knowing that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was dead, but that my home was essentially on lockdown, and that his brother Dzhokhar was still on the loose. Over what felt like the longest flight of my life, I remember praying silently that Dzhokhar would be found and brought to justice, and on landing in Honolulu, turned my phone back on to discover that, not only had he been caught, but on the street where I grew up (Franklin)-- just a few houses downhill from the home where I lived for close to twenty years.

All of the tension gone, I arrived at new command beaming with pride. When I checked in, I was asked for my home of record. I have never been more proud to tell anyone I was from Watertown, Massachusetts. Proud, because ours is a city that did not cower in fear, but whose people willingly stayed out of cops' way as they conducted their search for Tsarnaev, whose Police Department is second to absolutely none, and who stood strong in the face of these two men who wanted to terrorize and bring us down. When asked about it by curious shipmates now, I tell the stories of those folks who make me proud to be from Watertown, and proud to call myself both a Wat-rat and a Bostonian.

I tell them about Carlos Arredondo, the “man in the cowboy hat,” who lost both of his sons, one while serving in the Marines in Iraq, the other to suicide, and who selflessly rushed towards the blast area and applied tourniquets to the wounded and even held firmly on the exposed and severed artery of Jeff Bauman, who would go on to identify the bombing suspects. Arredondo held onto a blood-soaked American flag he had been carrying, never letting it fall to the ground, telling an interviewer, “I can't let it go, because somebody has to pay for this.”

I tell them about the Watertown Police, who have always been the most exemplary of public servants; and especially about Sergeants McLellan and Pugliese, both of whom I have known personally for years, and their brothers in blue, and their courageous, selfless, and heroic defense of Watertown that night.

I tell them that my town showed everyone what we're made of that week-- that we will literally drop everything and turn all our attention on bringing to justice those who would harm us or our fellow Americans.

I tell them I'm from a city of heroes.