When I moved to Norfolk as a new Navy wife years ago, I discovered an impressive group of residents here who have an important secret mission.
That mission? To take under their wings any sailors and family members they happen to meet who have no choice but to live at a distance from their own friends and relatives.
These fine folks - some natives, others transplants from other parts of the country, many veterans and retirees of military service themselves - never fail to reach out a hand of friendship to sailors they run into everywhere they go.
They extend invitations to come to their homes for home-cooked meals, meet their friends, help them with car repairs and even spend a couple of hours playing video games with the kids, if they’d like to.
Sailors from Phoenix, Seattle, Boston, Miami - at the drop of a hat, these folks sprinkled throughout the Hampton Roads area will make sailors and their loved ones feel sincerely welcome and wanted.
Why bother going to such lengths for mere strangers? Call it a quirk on their part, but they can’t stand the thought of anyone being a stranger alone in a strange place if they don’t have to be, especially sailors, when there’s always an extra chair or hamburger coming off the grill at their house.
To me, that’s where the true spirit in what “supporting our troops” is all about. Not so much in what we’re able to get from those who raise their right hands and become the world’s peacekeepers, but what we’re able to bring to their lives as citizens they live among who truly understand what it means to serve your country.
As a family, we’ve done the same thing ourselves over the years - welcoming sailors to our neighborhood or giving them a helping hand whenever we encounter them out and about in Hampton Roads. In looking back on the experience, what a wonderful richness these ‘newcomers in Navy blue’ have brought to our lives.
We’ve had the chance to glimpse other cultures through their eyes as they’ve shared their memories of voyages around the world. Shooting around Navy policies and politics with someone who hails from a distant home. And perhaps most importantly, to make new friends.
And as we discovered, thanks to these guys and gals, when East meets West and North meets South in the same blue uniform, the differences between all of us aren’t nearly so great, after all.
Got orders to Norfolk? Don’t despair; the old “Sailors and Dogs Keep Off the Grass” anti-Navy mentality has become a relic of the past. The deployment of so many military members from this area during the Persian Gulf War taught this community an extremely hard lesson about its own economy: Military paychecks keep Norfolk and the Hampton Roads area in general the thriving metropolis that it is.
You and your seabag will be welcome here, believe me.
