JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — After spending half of a year from their families, including holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, the military members serving with the “Tridents” of the VP-26 squadron, based out of NAS Jax, are back home with their families.
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Norival Souza waited with his 3-year-old son Maverick, named after the character the movie Top Gun, for Souza’s wife to hop off the plane home.
“She’s what holds us together, so, when she’s not home, things tend to fall apart a bit,” said Souza.
Souza served in the Navy but is now a stay-at-home dad for Maverick. He says this is the first time Maverick has seen his mom return home from a deployment since shortly after he was born.
“He’s dada’s boy,” Souza said, “so we don’t know if he will recognize her or not. But we’ll follow her no matter where he goes, we’ll always be with her.”
NAS Jax says VP-26 spent the deployment going around the world, on missions in countries like Italy and Africa, doing everything from gathering intelligence to carrying out anti-submarine warfare operations.
One of the women waiting with the other families was Sophie Lueluen, who had a sign reading “I’ve waited 186 days for this.” Lueluen tells Action News Jax that number represents about half of the year-long relationship she’s had with her boyfriend, who’s part of VP-26.
“I’ve done long distance before, but not like this,” Lueluen said, “knowing he was going to go into this, I was like ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to wait on some guy,’ but when you know, you know.”
Right after getting off the plane, Lt. Commander Cameron Flora immediately hugged his kids. But, being on his 5th deployment, he quickly had something in else in mind for them.
“First thing we’re doing is eating somewhere I probably couldn’t eat on deployment. Maybe Chipotle or something like that,” Flora said.
NAS Jax says the VP-26 squadron went to 19 total locations across the globe for their operations.
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