The other day, Jack Deacon was remembering the moment he got an invitation to cruise on the USS Ronald Reagan.
For years, he’d taken every opportunity to tour every decommissioned ship on the East Coast, dragging his wife, Pat, along beside him.
Twice the Mableton couple had gone through the Intrepid in New York, as well as the USS Alabama in Mobile, the USS North Carolina in Wilmington and the USS Yorktown in Charleston, S.C.
This, though, was different. The Reagan wasn’t a museum. The Reagan was real, a nuclear-powered super carrier still in service.
“Is this an April Fools' joke,” he asked his daughter Carolyn, an electronic technician third class when she called.
“No, it’s for real,” she said.
Jack hung up the phone that day and googled Tiger Cruise.
For more than two decades, he learned, the Navy has invited families to join crews during passages home in hopes of educating civilians about what sailors and Marines do and boosting crew morale.
If approved, he’d be sailing from Hawaii to San Diego. Grey hairs danced on the back of his neck.
Then another call came. This time Carolyn called to say more slots had opened. Jack could bring a guest.
A month later on July 28, the 65-year-old Army Reserve veteran received official word.
“Congratulations! You’ve been approved to join the Ronald Reagan Team for Tiger Cruise 2011,” stated a letter from Capt. T.W. Burke.
Deacon was overjoyed. This time, though, his wife wouldn’t be coming. She had seen enough battleships to last her a lifetime.
“A one-day tour is one thing,” Pat Deacon said. “I wasn’t going to live on one for an entire week.”
No, their 23-year-old daughter Suzy would.
“It was a graduation/birthday gift from Carolyn,” she said. “I knew it was going to be an adventure. I was more than happy to tag along.”
The journey begins
The Deacons were among some 1,500 other civilians invited abroad the Reagan for the cruise from Honolulu to San Diego.
Burke, the commanding officer, promised a “once-in-a-lifetime experience,” including daily guided tours throughout the ship, flight operations demonstrations and a long list of other fun activities.
On August 31, Jack and Suzy took a flight from Atlanta to Seattle and then finally Honolulu. It was the furthest either of them had been west of the Mississippi.
“I sat next to this grandmother with a 3-month-old baby who cried almost all the way,” Jack said. “It was a long flight.”
They arrived in Hawaii at 8 that evening, 2 a.m. Atlanta time, to news that the admiral had decided to button up the Ronald Reagan and set sail Saturday, rather than Sunday morning, two days sooner than expected.
As is customary, the sailors in their dress whites manned the rails, saluting the USS Arizona, where 1,500 World War II sailors died when the Japanese dropped a bomb on the ship hitting the place where the ammunition was stored.
Jack Deacon got a knot in his throat as they passed by.
“Thus began our six-day trek to San Diego,” he said.
A self-sufficient city
As the Ronald Reagan steamed out of Pearl Harbor early that morning, Deacon snapped photos. The Tigers and crew prepared for a week of entertainment that included bingo, karaoke and dance lessons.
The cruise wasn’t all pleasure, Jack Deacon said.
Indeed, it didn’t take long for him or Suzy to appreciate Carolyn’s daily regimen – up at 5 a.m., breakfast by 6 a.m., lights out at 10 p.m.
“You could stay up but you paid the price the next morning,” said Suzy half-smiling.
Just as Carolyn had since signing up for Naval duty in 2009, they slept on bunks, they ate in a mess hall, they got lost in the maze of corridors and people and climbed a seemingly endless amount of stairs.
“The amount of stairs just to get to Carolyn’s duty station was eight flights,” Suzy lamented. “They were steep and on a very big incline.”
Jack Deacon said that his legs felt like they were having their own private seizure each time he reached the top.
“There were no elevators except for planes to get to the flight deck,” he said.
As they reconnected with Carolyn and learned more about the ship, reality began sinking in, erasing any preconceived notions about life abroad the Reagan.
Carrying more than 6,000 people, the Reagan is a floating Navy base and self-sufficient city with its own hospital, jail, two mess halls and missile systems.
Inside the ship, there was no natural light. Outside on deck, they were buffeted by powerful, cold winds. There was no such thing as cellphone access and little to no access to the Internet.
“The roughest part was sleeping because my bunk was over the two propellers on the left side of the ship,” Jack said. “Occasionally, at night when they picked up speed, you could hear water hitting against the hull of the ship.”
Highlights, Jack said, included a chance, however short, to drive the huge carrier and watch aircraft land and take off from its deck.
By the morning of Day 6, the California skyline loomed large. As the ship entered the San Diego Bay, everyone waiting on the pier began chanting “welcome home” then “USA, USA.”
When it looked like the final moment wouldn’t come, Jack said, the chants turned to “dock the boat.”
With that, the Deacon’s first Tiger Cruise ended.
They appreciated the opportunity to see what life was like for Carolyn, but neither Jack nor Suzy would commit to ever doing it again.
“Maybe, maybe not,” they said.
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