Homefront Hero: Profile Andria, Marine Wife

December 4, 2008 By Claire
Posted in Spouse and Family

Home Front Heroes: Profile, Andria

This week I get to introduce you all to a very special Marine wife, Andria. Andria’s husband served in the Marine Corps from 1986 – 2006. She married her husband in 1993, which gives her veteran status as a military wife of 13-years. In those years Andria has lived OCONUS, she has held down the home front during times of separation and is now a mother to a 4-year old darling girl. Below are some questions I asked her during an interview and the answers she shared with me.

I particularly encourage you to read about Andria’s experiences in Japan and how it became a point of strength in her marriage. Although she has never served officially in the military, she most certainly took her role among the “silent ranks” to heart and made a home and family life for herself, her Marine and her daughter.

What branch does your spouse serve in how long have you been married. Tell us about your family?

Tim was in the Marine Corps from 1986 to 2006. I was his friend when he went in, then his girlfriend in 1989, then his fiance in 1990, and finally his wife in 1993.

We have one daughter (Katie). She was born in May 2004. So I was “officially” in from 1993 – 2006 as a military spouse, and unofficially from 1989 as a friend and girlfriend. I was with him from Corporal to Chief Warrant Officer 3.

We also have two wondermutts who just turned two but still don’t act like it

What state/base are you living in/on right now?

We moved to Topeka, KS in May 2004 on I&I duty (Inspector & Instructor – actively duty guys who support a reserve unit – Tim was the I&I – boss) and stayed here after he retired in December 2006.

Have you ever lived over seas? If so, when and where? What did you like/dislike about that location?

Okinawa, Japan – Camp Butler is the overall Marine Base there, we lived at Camp McToureous/Camp Courtney and Tim worked at Camp Hansen.

I loved living overseas and experiencing another culture first hand, it was absolutely fascinating. The weather was great, the base had a ton of family-oriented stuff to keep us busy. Tim spent a lot of his free time scuba diving over there, it’s dirt-cheap for classes and there was a lot to see. We are still good friends with some of the people we lived near while there, even though we haven’t seen them since we left in 1999. I guess riding out a typhoon together will bond people!

It was hard to be so far from family, especially if something bad happened back home, like when my dad had open heart surgery then he had a stroke. But the Red Cross, Tim’s command and the the guys running MAC were all totally supportive when I needed to get home and had me back stateside within about four days of Dad’s stroke and had Tim home a few weeks later in time to say good bye to Dad.

Being so far from home was probably the best thing for my marriage… no easy way out, if you will, so you have to work on problems instead of run home to mom. I was told that an overseas assignment will either make or break a relationship, and I can see why. It was really the point in our relationship when it became “us” instead of “you and me” and we became a family unit.

Also, it gave us time to set up a few traditions of our own, especially about the holidays, that helped make things easier once we were back in the states and trying to keep two families happy on 30 days leave a year.

What degrees, hobbies, interests do you have?

I have a bachelor of arts degree in Mathematics, with minors in educational psychology and secondary education, although I have never actually used it, professionally. My hobbies are scrap booking, reading, word puzzles, computer games (so called “casual games”, not the big role playing type stuff), photography. My interests include politics, homeschooling, and water skiing.

How many times have you pcs’d over the years?

Let me count! I got married and moved to 29 Palms, then to Okinawa, then Camp Pendleton then Topeka, so on official orders it is 4. Most of those moves meant a couple of mini-moves, into an apartment, then out to base housing type of thing. So seven moves total in fifteen years.

The Marines don’t really move around as much as the other branches, by what I’ve heard. There aren’t that many places to go in the Marines. East Coast, West Coast or Okinawa or I&I or recruiting duty. PCS’ing was never as bad as I had heard. Our last move was the hardest. All of the other moves were on orders, so that meant packers and movers and a lot of “supervising,” but other people did the heavy lifting. When we moved here in Topeka, it was just because we “wanted” to. Our lease was up and we were talking about sticking around town after retirement so we bought a house. Man, having to pack everything up yourself is really not fun. And moving on your own, even just twenty miles through town, with an 11 month old who thinks she need to learn to walk NOW… that was fun!

So my big advice on that is to never look at PCS orders as a way to make a little cash and do a DITY move, it’s not worth the effort, in my humble opinion!

Do you have a favorite story about a pcs or other military life experience?

Of my own, no great PCS stories, unless you count the time that the movers came a day early, and so they managed to pack our passports, my birth control pills and my contact lenses before I could get them stashed safely away. Tim had to go get the crates out of storage and go through them (our passports weren’t “lost” according to the powers-that-be, just misplaced… lesson learned: the whole truth can mean more work).

So, be prepared a few days earlier than you think you need to be!

Oh, I guess the pregnant move was fun too, depending on how you define fun. We got PCS orders to Topeka when I was about 30 weeks pregnant with Katie and had five weeks to prep and get to Kansas. Tim did most of the work. He drove one car out here, left it at the reserve center, found us a place to rent and a new OB, flew home, arranged the packing and moving stuff, checked out, drove a very grouchy pregnant chick with gestational diabetes and a trailer with his race car on it to Topeka.

I don’t remember much about it, I tried to zone out a lot and stay calm and focused so as to keep my blood sugars steady. We got here, spent about a week waiting for our stuff and got into our house with two weeks to spare. Seriously, I saw my new OB twice. Third time was for him to confirm that yes, I was in labor (16 days early) and the 4th was a couple of hours later to catch Katie. I was probably the easiest $2000 he made!

Best story that is not pcs related? I loved going to Washington DC when TIm was in school at Quantico and watching the Evening Parade at the barracks at 8th & I. It was awesome! The Silent Drill Team is there, and the precision drill stuff gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. I think that is where the Commadant’s House is as well.

What do you like most about being a military spouse?

I like taking pride in what my husband did. It’s a great thing to brag about! Not to mention that the uniforms always made him so handsome! OK, for real, I liked the sense of community on base “we’re all in this boat together” as much as I always seemed to be the next-door neighbor to the witch of the neighborhood (and every neighborhood has them, they are issued from central headquarters, I think). I liked the travel and going overseas and seeing things I would never have seen otherwise.

What do you like least (other than the obvious deployment)?

Witchy neighbors weren’t much fun, the gossip was brutal at times. Having Tim be gone for training on nearly every one of my birthdays (that will teach me to be born in the middle of the summer huh?)

Have you been on the home front during a deployment?

The only time Tim was gone for a long time without me was before we got married. He went Embassy Guard the week after we got engaged (May 1990) and returned home for good in December 1992. I saw him for a total of 45 days then. Then he was home for A month in January then off to school for about 10 weeks then off to his new duty station. So when we got married I had seen him for less than 90 days out of a week shy of 3 years.

Somehow we dodged most of the deployments. He was assigned to 3rd LAR when we got married in 1993, but they deployed by company and he stayed home with two companies that were still stateside. He did CAX for about six weeks during the summer. Then he was assigned to the Staff Academy in 29 Palms, so he was busy a lot, about 80 students every six to eight weeks which meant he’d be gone in the field about a week every two months. Same sort of situation in Okinawa. He was with 9th ESB for a while then they moved him to the staff academy there.

So, we have had lots of little deployments but only a week or two at a time. When we got back to Camp Pendleton he was assigned to the Las Pulgas Ammo Supply Point (ammo dump) so he did a lot of the CAX stuff, but just six to eight weeks a couple of times a year.

During the first gulf war he was in Cairo, Egypt on Embassy Guard Duty. During the second conflict he was at Las Pulgas but at that point he was the “base guy” not actually with the unit. He was the one to stay back with about 20 of the guys no one wanted to take into combat and the pregnant chicks! He worked long, long days and sometimes didn’t make it home, but no one was shooting at him, so it was OK.

He didn’t deploy with the reservists either, because they would go in small groups, so I have been beyond fortunate. I always kind of liked him going away for a few weeks because it gave me some time to do stuff I liked that he didn’t. Plus it made me miss him just enough that the dirty socks on the floor ceased to be a bone of contention. But I think six months would be a lot harder, and these year-long deployments have to be just horrid. I’ll totally admit to being glad that he got out before he had to go to Iraq. That was a big factor in the timing of retirement for us.

Even without long deployments, he was still gone a lot. How did you cope?

Keep busy with work and friends. The Internet definitely made it better in later years. You do not want to know what I was spending on phone bills when he was MSG to Cairo. Let’s just say that $600 a month was a cheap month! When he was gone to TBS (Warrant Officer promotion meant you went to boot camp again, at least the officer training part) for three months, I stayed in Okinawa. Friends kept bugging me so much I don’t think I ate by myself more than one meal a week. I wanted more alone time, honestly. And Tim and I would chat through ICQ every weekend, so it wasn’t too bad. I still have the box of letters we sent back and forth while he was MSG. I might need to edit those before Katie learns to read! Or burn a few!

Do you have any advice for other military spouses who are just starting out?

Best advice I got was to listen to what others said about any new duty station, but take none of it to heart. No base is perfect and no base is hell. Look at it as an adventure, because before you know it you will be moving again. It’s about 90% mental, and if you go into sure you’ll hate it there, you will and you will be miserable. Most people hated 29 Palms… it is in the middle of the Mohave Desert, after all, but I was so happy to finally be with Tim that it never really bothered me that much and if I could go back to any base, I’d probably go there. I heard Camp Pendleton was the best, but I didn’t like it much, I’m not into the traffic and crazy shallowness of Southern California at all and was happy to leave. Attitude is everything.

Don’t be a slave to the calendar. If your spouse is going to be gone over a holiday or birthday, celebrate it when you are together, full on. We had Christmas in October when Tim was MSG, because that was when he was home on leave. It was fun to go find all the Christmas trimmings off season (before the internet… might be easier to find stuff now) and actually made it one of my favorite Christmases ever.

Also, invest in three great, classic dresses for the Marine Corps Balls. Don’t get trendy stuff… make them up-to-date with accessories. You will almost never go to four balls with the same unit and even if you do, everyone from the first will be gone by the fourth. I saved myself a boatload of money once I did that.

And, for our last question, If you had to list the top three most vital characteristics that a spouse needs to possess to be a successful and well adjusted military spouse, what would those be?

Be flexible (Tim’s motto was alway plan for the best and prepare for the worst).
Be independent (it still amazes me what I can fix when I have to) and,
Be your spouse’s biggest cheerleader and loudest supporter.

There are a lot more, but those three are the biggies, to me.

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