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Home at last: Ricky Stanley looks forward to his firstborn son
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Ricky Stanley speaks to his unborn son just after coming home. Belinda Stanley became pregnant when Ricky was home on leave in November. The baby is due in July. • Photos
Fort Stewart — Belinda Stanley rubs her arms against the chill of a misty morning and pulls a green blanket up to her chin. She’s sitting in a grandstand with her daughters, the three of them looking like fans at a high school football game. But what they have to cheer is far more important.
A year of waiting and worrying is almost over. Belinda’s husband, Sgt. Ricky Stanley, is returning from Iraq with the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
Belinda was so eager for their reunion that she left their home near Dublin at 3 a.m. to drive the 130 miles to Fort Stewart, near Savannah. It was still dark when she took her place in the reviewing stands at the same parade ground where she saw Ricky off last May. As the sun rises, a crowd of 500 joins her to welcome units from Dublin, Statesboro and other towns.
Belinda looks exhausted. “I didn’t get two hours of sleep last night,” she says.
It has been a year of sleepless nights. Belinda feared that Ricky would return a changed man, traumatized by what he had seen or haunted by something he had been forced to do. She feared that he wouldn’t return at all; 26 members of the brigade didn’t.
Now, sitting in the stands, her mind is focused not on death, but on life. A new life in her family. When Ricky came home on leave last fall, Belinda became pregnant. Beneath that green blanket, she’s carrying their first son.
The soldiers’ planes have landed, but the homecoming ceremony is running late. At 10 a.m., the PA announcer finally exclaims, “Here they are!”
A convoy of buses appears, and the place erupts. Belinda and the girls spring to life, hollering and waving and unfurling two banners.
As the soldiers form into ranks across the parade ground, an Army band strikes up “Georgia on My Mind.” After the national anthem and a few words from a general, the crowd rushes the field and the formations dissolve into a chaos of hugs and tears.
Belinda climbs down the stands with some difficulty and marches onto the field looking for Ricky, her high-heeled sandals sinking into the squishy turf. They spot each other and merge into a kiss.
Then Ricky steps back to examine his wife’s altered shape. He hasn’t seen her like this in almost 14 years, not since Chazmine, their younger daughter, was born 20 months after their first child, Ra’Teema.
Ricky traces his fingers across his wife’s stomach and bends close to whisper. He wants to talk to his son.
Ricky’s company has been given two days off before its members have to report back to Fort Stewart to begin out-processing. He loads his gear into Belinda’s blue Impala and they set out for home.
Ricky sees how tired his wife is and offers to drive.
“No, I’m fine,” she replies in a groggy voice.
He looks at her midsection and chuckles. “You’ve got a little more pooch than I thought you’d have.”
“That’s because it’s a boy,” Belinda says. At 35, she figured her childbearing years were behind her. But she’s happy; her 36-year-old husband wanted a son so badly.
As the car passes a guard shack with a lonely figure inside, Ricky shakes his head ruefully and says, “That’s some boring duty.”
He should know. Ricky spent his first months in Iraq driving supply convoys around Baghdad, along routes where roadside bombs were killing GIs in clusters. His last months were a blessed bore by comparison. He was a gate guard at an isolated post in a part of the country with little insurgent activity. One of the biggest scares came the day hail started to fall and everyone thought it was incoming mortar fire.
Ricky checks his watch. He never reset it from Georgia time. But now that he’s in Georgia, he can’t help but think of Iraq.
“It’s 8:15 at night over there,” he says. “I’d be in the middle of my shift. I miss the guys already.”
It’s approaching lunchtime. Belinda exits I-16 at Metter and pulls up to a McDonald’s drive-through to get cheeseburgers for the girls, who have been napping in the back seat. Ricky spies a KFC next door.
“I believe I’m gonna walk over there get me some American fried chicken,” he says. “We had fried chicken at our camp, but they didn’t season it right. I’m tired of those Iraq birds and all those camelburgers.”
Belinda later joins him and orders a combo of chicken and potato wedges. Instead of eating in the restaurant, though, she returns to the car and balances her lunch on her lap as she hits the interstate at 70 mph.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” Ricky asks. “I’m not sure it’s safe for you to drive while you eat like that.”
“Ricky,” Belinda replies wearily, “what do you think I’ve been doing all the time you’ve been gone?”
Since Ricky was mobilized 18 months ago, Belinda has juggled the obligations of life like that fast-food lunch: her job, her children, her church, her volunteer activities — and now her pregnancy. She has managed the home front ably. Her biggest challenge has been managing her emotions. With a husband in a war zone and another child on the way, it hasn’t been easy. There were days, especially last summer, when she cried off and on for hours and couldn’t bring herself to leave the house.
Ricky talked to his wife several times a week while he was gone. He knows his deployment was hard on her, maybe harder than it was on him.
When he notices her drip ketchup onto the steering wheel, he reaches over without a word and wipes it away with a napkin.
The Stanleys live in the countryside 10 miles west of Dublin. As Belinda angles off the highway for the last leg of the trip, Ricky says he wants to stop by his father’s house, which is on the way.
Carnell Stanley is a 65-year-old farmer and masonry contractor. Ricky often helps him at construction sites when he gets off from his regular job as a shipping supervisor at the YKK aluminum plant in Dublin. Ricky knew his time in Iraq was drawing to a close when he started dreaming about laying bricks with his dad. His dad was having the same dreams.
Belinda stops in front of her father-in-law’s brick home. No one’s there. Ricky phones him, and soon a red pickup truck comes bounding up the dirt road in back of the house. A gray-headed man with a broad smile climbs out of the cab stiffly.
“You been playing in your pig pen?” Ricky asks his father.
They embrace and stand there laughing for a full minute. They resemble each other down to their uniforms. Ricky wears sand-colored combat boots and desert fatigues with “Stanley” stitched across the pocket. His father wears shoes tinged with red Georgia clay and a blue work shirt with “Carnell” stitched on the pocket.
They talk about the things country folk always talk about.
“What’s the weather been like over there?”
“Hot,” Ricky says. “It was over 100 toward the end. I had sweat jumping off me like parachutes.”
Ricky scans the fields and notices tender green shoots pushing through the soil.
“How your peanuts doing?”
“Good. Put ‘em in last week,” his dad replies. “And I got a pretty field of wheat over there.”
A school bus barges by and Ricky waves. He leans against the pickup and paws the dirt with a boot.
“You get any scuppernongs on that vine over there?”
“Been getting ‘em for three seasons now,” his father says.
They catch each other’s eye and start laughing again.
“You know, I couldn’t go to work today,” Carnell Stanley says. “I wanted to be here when you got back.”
He clasps his son’s hand. “I’ll let you go on home and catch a nap before I come around and aggravate you.”
Back in the car, Ricky touches Belinda’s stomach again and feels the baby kick. “That boy’s getting ready to come out and act the fool with his daddy,” he says. “Hold on, son. I’m right here.”
When they finally get home, Ricky can’t believe his eyes. His yard is as yellow as an Easter chick. Big yellow ribbons deck every tree, and yellow balloons float above the mailbox and front entry. The owner of a local day care center — someone Belinda didn’t even know — decorated the grounds.
Ricky walks in the door and notices that Belinda has replaced the off-white living room furniture with a burgundy set. He collapses into the new love seat.
“I was thinking you’d like that chair over there,” Belinda says, pointing to a chaise longue.
Ricky dutifully redeploys and invites his wife to sit next to him.
“Are you sure I can fit?” she says. “You said my stomach was big as a basketball.”
Ricky cackles. “Oh, come on. There’s room for the three of us.”
He calls to his daughters and asks them to pull off his boots the way they used to when he came home from work. Chaz and ‘Teema each grab a foot and yank and go sprawling across the floor when the boots finally give way.
“I think I’m going to catch some scores on ESPN,” Ricky announces.
The first image that comes up on the big-screen TV is a commercial for the Army Reserve. A son is breaking the news to his father that he has enlisted. The old man is dubious and wants to know whether his boy will get good training. Of course, the boy says. “It’s the Army.”
Belinda, who seems half-asleep, rouses herself to roll her eyes and mutter, “Yeah.”
Ricky gets up to fetch his backpack. He bought jewelry for everyone during his layover in Kuwait. One bracelet — a tiny one — bears the name of his son, who is due in July. Ricky is a deeply religious man who wants to become an ordained minister, so it figures that he chose a name out of the Bible. “Zion,” the bracelet says in English and Arabic.
After a while, Ricky slips on a pair of sandals and walks out into the yard to inspect his property. He says little as he wanders among the trees and yellow ribbons. Ambling over to the driveway, he lifts the hood of their Ford Explorer and looks down to see a dog approaching cautiously. It’s his dog, Blackie.
Last May, when Ricky was getting ready to leave for Iraq, he suffered nightmares about desperate hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. The dreams upset him so much that he would get out of bed, sit on his front steps and pray in the stillness of the Georgia night, Blackie at his side.
As it turned out, Iraq didn’t resemble the nightmares. He experienced none of the face-to-face fighting he imagined from watching war movies.
But the reality was just as frightening: lethal bombs hidden on roads by faceless strangers. Surrounded by death, only his faith and the thought of home pulled him through.
When Ricky left for Iraq, his dog left home, too. Blackie wandered away and took up with his master’s brother, who lives across the field.
On this fine afternoon almost exactly a year later, Blackie is home. Ricky lowers the hood of his Ford and holds out a hand. The dog sniffs it and his tail begins to wag.
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Comments
By sherry
May 14, 2006 05:37 PM | Link to this
thank God that ricky came home safely to his family. ever since the ajc published the profile on him when the 48th deployed, i have thought of him & his family many times. not only did he get home to his family safely, he has a son on the way… how wonderful is that?
By Elaine
May 14, 2006 11:25 PM | Link to this
Welcome Home-Enjoy your family-esp. your new precious little boy. Thanks for all you have done for us-rest well-job well done.
By JOY
May 15, 2006 10:09 AM | Link to this
Congrats on your safe return Ricky as well as congrats on your new bundle of joy. Wishing you and your family the best. Thank you for helping to keep America safe.
By DENNIS BYRD SR
May 16, 2006 08:52 PM | Link to this
TO: SGT.and mrs.Stanley.GOD IS a pray answeing GOD,don’t stop praying,bless your family,I prayed for my brother Sgt.Anthony Byrd,and GOD allowed him to come back home claxton and hagan Ga. Dennis Byrd SR. INDIANAPOLIS,INDIANA
By Sheila Dixon
May 19, 2006 01:44 PM | Link to this
I was born and raised in Dublin. When I saw the very first article about soilders from Dublin, I have tried to read each one. I thank God for the internet and the fact that the AJC would do articles on people from my hometown. I now reside in Knoxville, TN. My daughter n law is a teacher for the County School system in East Dublin. Ricky and Belinda each time I read an article about you and your family it brought me to tears. I thank God that He has allowed you all to come together again. God Bless you all and I pray that Zion will be healthy. Thank You Lord for allowing Ricky to make it home to his family. This to me was a happy ending, for your family it is a new beginning. Thank God for New Beginings!