Flight drama offset by gratitude

July 1, 2007

Homefront / By Tiffany Horvath

He got bumped from his first flight out of Baghdad, which led to his missing his flight out of Kuwait. He then flew to Ireland, a day later than planned. Being of Irish descent, he was thrilled to see the land of his forefathers. It being three in the morning when he arrived, he was somewhat disappointed at the fact that he got to see nothing and that all the pubs were closed.

From Ireland he flew to Dallas, where he experienced about a four-hour delay. He then arrived in Denver, where he spent eight hours trying to get on a flight to Anchorage.

A little over 24 hours more than we had planned for and after almost four days spent in airports, my husband finally arrived in Anchorage at 1:07 a.m. Thursday night, or technically Friday morning.

I rented us a room for the night at a local hotel.

In spite of the fact that he spent an exhausting four days flying and grounded at different airports, my husband was overwhelmed and touched by all the support he received from everyone everywhere he went.

He commented that he had no idea soldiers were going to be treated like this when they came home.

In Dallas, an announcement was made over an airport loudspeaker that several soldiers just came in from Iraq, and my husband and several other soldiers on the flight with him were greeted with standing ovations, cheers and hugs from hundreds of people. He and the other soldiers were given water and snacks and free phone cards and hugs from what he called &#8220little old ladies.”

In Denver, he and several other Fort Richardson soldiers were stuck for a long time waiting for a flight to open up. They ended up having several meals at airport restaurants.

They never paid a single bill.

Complete strangers anonymously paid their food bills, and their bar tabs when they had a beer.

People came up to them and thanked them and blessed them for their jobs.

When my husband realized there were no pay phones anywhere for him to call me and let me know he was delayed, and stranger handed him her cell phone and insisted he call me on it immediately.

When they finally got on a flight from Denver to Anchorage, Alaska Airlines insisted on seating my husband and the only other soldier on the flight in first class.

When I got to the airport to pick him up, I was an hour early. It was on purpose: I had no intention whatsoever of missing him. The Alaska Airlines ticket counter, upon learning I was meeting my husband from Iraq, let me go to the gate to surprise him.

As he walked out the gate, the seventh person off the plane, I knew him immediately.

He hadn't changed much on the outside. He was little more sunburned, a little more tired and a lot happier than he was the last time I saw him.

That time, we were saying good-bye.

It took us almost five minutes to get around to actually speaking hello this time, much to the amusement of the other people coming off the plane.

He had spent four days getting to Alaska from a small base in Iraq and couldn't have been happier.

He was thrilled with the support he had gotten from anonymous strangers across the United States and touched in more ways than he could count by the small favors people had done for him.

He was ecstatic to be home and I was just as thrilled as he was.

We spent that night in downtown Anchorage at a local hotel, and the next morning we headed into Palmer, where he got to see his children for the first time in eight months.

But, that's another story entirely.

Tiffany Horvath is the mother of two and the stepmother of one. Her husband, Drew, is deployed to Iraq. She writes every Sunday abut life at home for the wife of a deployed

soldier.