By JOSEPH KELLARD
Parks, who calls California home, spent the holiday with his fiance, Christine Glynn, a native of Island Park and a warrant officer stationed in Massachusetts, at the home of her parents, Ellen and Ted Glynn. His battalion had just spearheaded the coalition's march through Iraq, engaging in major battles throughout, and Ellen and Ted were with him all the way -- thanks to cable news reporters embedded with his unit.
"Everyone on the news was telling us where he was, because his unit always led the way," said Ellen, who along with Ted was glued to the TV set throughout the war. "Tom was in Baghdad, he was one of the troops that the [American] prisoners were released to, and he was in Tikrit. We saw him another time when there was a firefight. He was also at an orphanage where a group of nuns stayed with handicapped youngsters, and we could see him in the background. Every now and then we'd see him on TV."
After each battle, Bob Arnot, a special foreign correspondent for MSNBC, allowed Tom to use his phone to call back home to say he was OK. "Right before he came home, he called my husband and I just to tell us that he loved us and that he really wanted to come home because he was exhausted," Ellen said.
Before he was released for rest and recuperation, done in by battle, desert heat and sleep deprivation, Parks opted to meet Christine at the Glynns' home for Easter rather than lie in some Middle Eastern hospital.
Normally outgoing, Parks was "very subdued," Ellen said, when he arrived at her home. "He was glad to see everyone, but he was very, very withdrawn. By the time the night came and he had been around everybody and he had eaten, we sent him in to take a nap, and by that time at night you could see a marked change. He's seen a lot of battle and I think he'd just had it. He's still having flashbacks and bad dreams. It's going to take time."
Brother stationed overseas
Despite now having Christine and Tom safely on American soil, the Glynns still have their minds on their son, Patrick, a Marine Corps fighter pilot stationed in Japan.
Patrick was deployed there nine months ago when North Korea's threats toward America escalated, and when the war with Iraq began in mid-March, Patrick and his unit of FA-18 Hornet fighter pilots bivouacked in a tent at the border between North and South Korea. Today, Patrick continues to fly routinely to Okinawa and South Korea, but his plane ride back to the States remains indefinite.
"He calls to let us know he's on the road, and he calls us when he gets back to Japan," said Ellen, whose words were edged with worry. "But every time he goes up in a plane, though, my heart goes..."
Patrick's road to flying FA-18 Hornets in the Far East was initially paved when he was only 10, just after his brother, James, graduated from boot camp in Parris Island, S.C.
"We had stopped at the Marine air base down in South Carolina, and Patrick saw two jets take off, and he said, 'That's what I want to do,'" his mother recalled. "And Patrick realized his dream."
A month after graduating from Chaminade High School in Mineola, Patrick, 28, joined the U.S. Naval Academy. After his graduation there, he went for training in Pensacola, Fla., to see if he had what it took to become a pilot. He qualified for jets. Patrick went to Kingsville, Tex., for his basic jet training, and he's now in a Hornet squadron that flies in all kinds of weather.
Christine, 33, a warrant officer on active reserve in Massachusetts, joined the Marine Corps after graduating from West Hempstead High, inspired by her elder brother, James, and father, Ted Glynn, a World War II veteran.
"She's loved it ever since," Ellen said.
Like James, Christine went to Parris Island for basic training, and after attending school in Texas she joined the military police. Once she received top security clearance, she was admitted to the first President Bush's HMX-1 Marine squadron, a unit dedicated solely to presidential helicopter security. More recently, Christine joined the reserves, but she soon returned to the Marine Corps. Now a warrant officer with a reserve air unit in Chicopee, Mass., she is in charge of administration, running the paper work to ensure, for example, that all military families are paid and all Marines overseas are accounted for.
"If somebody has to be sent home, they will call her and she will make sure they are met and they safely get to where they have to go," Ellen explained.
In October, if all goes according to plan, Christine will tie the knot with Parks. Meanwhile, following Easter dinner, Parks returned with his fiance to Massachusetts to continue his rest and recuperation, and while in New England he visited relatives in Connecticut and his native New Hampshire.
"We're a very close and loving family," Ellen said. "Granted, these young men and women are in the military because they want to be. But they need the support of everyone here."
