KItsap Navy News October 7, 2011

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COVERING PUGET SOUND NAVAL NEWS FOR BREMERTON | BANGOR | KEYPORT

NAVY NEWS Kitsap

VOLUME 1, NO. 28 | 7 OCTOBER 2011

www.kitsapnavynews.com

Veteran enrollment booming at O.C. New vet center seen as valuable resource By Tom James

tjames@kitsapnavynews.com

Veteran enrollment is up for the second straight year at Olympic College, and more vets than ever are putting the school’s new Veterans and Military Support Center to good use.

SEE ENROLLMENT | PAGE 7

Billy Rhea, Nick Bowlin, and Michael Tamburri work to construct a french drain at a Habitat for Humanity house Oct. 4, 2011. The trio are staying behind while the John C. Stennis deploys to the Middle East. TOM JAMES/STAFF PHOTO

On the beach

Stennis detachment helps at home with 13,000 volunteer-hours By Tom James tjames@kitsapnavynews.com

Not every vessel has one. Being attached to one actually means a sailor stays home while their ship goes to sea. Chances are, that sailor earned it. Welcome to Beach Detachment. “It’s a chance for them to get focused again on Navy operations,” said Jonas Carter, senior chief in charge of the USS John C. Stennis beach detachment. “[It’s] not ground-pounding, not prison camps,” he said. Known as “Beach Det,” the goal of the Stennis beach detachment is to keep track of and put to use sailors that are left behind when the ship deploys, said Carter. That group includes sailors returning from “Individual Augmentations” - tours with the other armed services in places like Iraq

and Afghanistan. After those deployments, which can last twelve months or more, Carter said, sailors get up to one year of non-operational time, or “dwell time.” During that time, he said, the sailors are still active duty, but they don’t deploy with their ship, Carter said. Instead they stay behind for some wellearned time in port, with their families. “It’s because of the types of exposure, like [being a] prison guard,” said Petty Officer James Mercer, who came to the beach after a tour as a prison guard at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “You’re standing guard 12 hours a day on guys who want to kill you,” he said. Part of a sailor’s dwell time, Carter said, is spent doing the day-in, day-out of military life - physical training, on-thejob training, paperwork and clean-up. A second component, however, makes Beach Det unique: volunteering. In addition to his regular duties, Mercer coordinates with non-military programs around the region that need volunteers. Recently sailors from the group set up the New Life Church’s Festival of giving at Cheney Stadium. Sailors also regularly help move senior citizens around the county into assisted living, Mercer said, and part of their offi-

cial duty is moving furniture and installing heavy appliances for spouses of sailors deployed on their ship. Helping out isn’t required. Instead, after coordinating with an organization Mercer makes a morning request for volunteers. “It is not forced that they do this,” said Carter. “But more times than not we have more volunteers than we need.” Since the Stennis’ July departure, Carter said, Beach Det has put in more than 13,000 hours, all volunteer and all on local projects. Tuesday found nine of those beach detachment sailors working at a housing complex under construction by Kitsap County Habitat for Humanity. Nathan Jeffries, an aviation electrician who stayed behind to be with a sick family member, was busy installing a shed door. “In the Navy you usually work on a very small part of a big picture,” said Jeffries, adding that he spends most of his time working with tiny electronic components. “Out here when you’re working with your hands, you can actually see what you’ve done. It gives you a really good sense of accomplishment.” Even in his situation, though, Jeffries

SEE BEACH | PAGE 7

THIS EDITION Extreme cooking tips for region’s cooks ........pg. 2 Nimitz sailors stay sharp in dry dock.................pg. 3 Levy is not ploy to dangle vets before voters. .pg. 4 Destroyer Patterson always close to frontines pg. 13


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