In 2005, our vessel made port at Guam for a port call. The majority of the crew got to have liberty, but not me—I was on duty the day before we left, which kept me on the ship. That’s part of the job, isn’t it?
I was once called in to “ride brakes” on our E-2C, which was parked right in front of the carrier’s island. If you’re not familiar, riding brakes basically means I was in the cockpit, ready to brake in case while they shoved the plane. Piece of cake.
So I waited inside the cockpit. Nothing exciting, just keeping time. Sooner or later, I spot a group of reporters being shown around the flight deck. No problem—until one of them happened to notice me sitting there. Strangely enough, the fellow waves, and I thought, why not, so I stand up out of the overhead hatch to see what he’s doing. He asks a few questions—usual questions, nothing that I can recall—and then he asks if I’d be okay with his taking my picture.
“Certainly, why not?” I told myself. It wasn’t like anything was going to come of it anyway.
Fast forward to the day we’re leaving port. I’m strolling past the maintenance control office when our Warrant Officer takes me down a peg. He’s grinning and remarks, “Hey, you’re famous now.”
I had no clue what he was talking about initially. And then he brings out a Pacific Daily News—essentially, he grabbed a bunch of them so that I could mail some back home—and there I was, on the second page. The photo the reporter had snapped of me in the cockpit wound up in the paper, with the caption:
Technician: Petty Officer 2nd Class Patrick Hugh-es, an aviation electronics technician with Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 117 who is originally from Stratford, Ct., stands out of an emergency escape hatch of an E-2C Hawkeye as he waits to be towed on the flight deck of USS Nimitz yesterday.
I never saw it coming, but hey, I guess that’s one way to leave a mark during a port visit!
