“…You will proceed on permanent change of station as shown…Dependents will remain in Virginia.”
Raise your hand if you have ever spent a year, the better part of a year, 6 months, 4 months or even a few weeks at home alone with two-under-two while your spouse is away; those of you with raised hands understand fully without any further explanation why I volunteer for Op:Love.
Welcome home, Daddy, and Happy anniversary, John & Daniella!
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FROM: COMMANDING GENERAL, MARINE CORPS MOBILIZATION COMMAND
TO: CORPORAL TIMOTHY R PILLON
SUBJ: ORDERED TO ACTIVATION-PARTIAL MOBILIZATION
1. YOU HAVE BEEN INVOLUNTARILY ORDERED TO ACTIVE DUTY FROM YOUR RESIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARED UNDER PRESIDENTIAL PROCLAMATION 7463 OF 14 SEPTEMBER 2001…
Thus begins the letter stuffed inside the Fed-Ex package Shannon Pillon found on her doorstep one random, ordinary day. And yes, the original is written in all caps. Her husband, Tim, left home May 1, 2008, to report for duty. This is why so many photographers nationwide donate time, talents and personal profits to Operation: Love in support of military troops who ask for nothing more than to return home at the end of their tour.
It was Op: Love that led Shannon to me, but it’s Murphy’s Military Law that we have both faced head-on that bonds us. Murphy’s Military Law: it will all come crashing down in the face of deployment. I have several deployment stories that are almost too unbelievable to share — pregnant and alone with a one-year-old in a new city, no furniture and no friends or family nearby, sleeping on an air mattress for 2 months waiting for our household goods to arrive from overseas; a lightening storm crashing a neighbor’s 80-foot Elm into our home, knocking out the power and heat and causing $30K worth of damage while I cared for two-under-two, one of whom was extremely sick; or the times I got sick and could barely drag myself to change diapers and feed my babies…sound familiar? Any Murphy’s Military Law stories to share?
In a frantic rush to squeeze the Pillon family in for photos before Tim’s departure, we worked first around the family’s biggest nightmare — an involuntary recall and a one-year deployment to Iraq — only to face the second biggest nightmare, Mom needing emergency surgery, only to face the third biggest nightmare, their youngest son needs surgery on the horizon. One thing I’ll say for military families: it’s times like these that we help our own. Please extend your thoughts, words of encouragement and prayers to the Pillon family, Tim for defending our freedoms and Shannon for being the glue that holds it all together in his absence.
2 comments
May 25, 2008 - 4:40 pm
There is no law in Murphy’s book more true than the one that says “anything that can go wrong will go wrong…all at once when your spouse is deployed” From termite infestations and flooded basesments full of personal belongings, to car crashes and sudden illnesses you just never know what you’re going to get. The one constant has been the support of family and the military community around us, and the strength we’ve found in ourselves that we never knew we had–and probably wouldn’t have discovered any other way. To paraphrase Mother Teresa: “I know God won’t give me more than I can handle, I just wish he didn’t consider me so capable”. All our prayers and thoughts are with your family, and with all of our deployed troops on this Memorial Day.
July 9, 2008 - 1:12 pm
I see it all-the babies , the grandchildren , the scenery, the adults, the teenagers,family, friends and I think-wow-she’s my daughter-in-law.This has become my past time-looking to see what’s coming next. Thanks
It was midnight on December 23, 2001, and my babies were outfitted in red, white and blue. I was keeping them awake past bedtime, way beyond the bewitching hour when silliness turns to delirium, for a special surprise. Children running amok, mothers pacing, the air in the squadron thick with wild excitement, fear, ecstasy, nervous apprehension and the full gamut of emotion, we looked out over the darkened tarmac, watching for the lights of the C-17 that would deliver our Christmas gift: Daddy on American soil.
That night was the first time my children and I welcomed Daddy home from a combat mission, and it was the first time any of us saw a desert uniform. Our son, barely three years old at the time, snatched Carlos’s hat and immediately tried it on; our daughter, then one-and-a-half, yanked it right off her brother’s head and was promptly swallowed up by it.
Please visit this page for specific information on how the Operation: Love Re-United program works if you are a military family preparing for a deployment or expect a deployed loved one home soon. If you are stationed at the Pentagon, Ft. Belvoir or Andrews Air Force Base and are interested in having my studio photograph your family as part of Op:Love, contact me for more information and scheduling requests.
fine print: Please note that this program aims to serve military families whose service member is currently deployed or has orders to deploy in the near future; Op:Love requires a valid military ID and deployment orders; service members must be in uniform for the portraits; in addition to the album of prints for the deploying service member, the family will receive a custom slide show of images that will remain online for the duration of the service member’s deployment; a separate model release is required for Op:Love participants.
3 comments
September 27, 2007 - 2:28 am
The photos, of course, speak for themselves (although who’s that guy hunkered down in the background? There something almost David Lynch-esque about that man), but your writing is a cut above your normal excellence.
Seriously speaking, those first two paragraphs could easily be the beginning of a good novel.
September 27, 2007 - 10:53 pm
great. just as I abandon the idea of writing a novel and start a photo business, you spot the novelist in me. it’s a good thing you’re not a book editor, or I’d be forced to ban you from my photography blog forever. (you’re not a book editor, are you, Antisocialist? and this is completely off point, but I’m dying to ask: are you in fact anti-social?)
I’m told the man in the background is C-17 Pilot Dan Nichols, filling out a 7-81 (or was it 17-80? I’m not very good with numbers.) either way, I’m guessing it’s one of those Air Force regulation forms that all flights are required to document.
speaking of David Lynch, can you BELIEVE I’ve never seen “Blue Velvet”? I once received a handwritten letter (remember those? circa 1980s-early 1990s) that referenced “Blue Velvet” and I made a mental note to see it so that I could fully appreciate the point being made, but it’s still on my list of things to do. David Lynch, like me, is an Aquarius and he shares the same last name as my mother and stepfather.
September 29, 2007 - 11:07 pm
You’re an Aquarius? That explains everything. Blue Velvet was good, I felt, but a little over-rated. Wild at Heart is where it’s at.
To answer your first question, I’m not a book editor, but I play one on my blog. You should check my blog out sometime, if you never have, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, feeling daffy.
To answer your second question, no, I’m not an antisocial person – with or without the hyphen.
Relax. It’s only time for Christmas on the retail end. And normally I wouldn’t even be participating in such madness, except that I’ve gotten ahold of some really fabulous designs for photo greeting cards and am so excited to share them with clients this season! All three collections are on display on my website, Christine Gacharna dot com, but here’s a preview of some of my favorites (showcasing, of course, some of my favorite images of my favorite subjects!):
no comments
I was giving my friend Miette the walking tour of downtown Washington D.C., and we stopped to look up her brother-in-law. The book we referenced gave us his name, rank, branch of service, date of birth (he was born the day after what would later become my wedding anniversary), date of death (he died within days of what would later become the my son’s birthday) and his hometown of Santa Ana, California (he was a fifth-generation Californian, I later learned.) On the wall, 7 West, line 129, John’s is a name in a sea of names, each distinguishingly different from yet equal to the next.
Miette called John’s brother, Jim Hunt, and we learned from just that brief conversation that John graduated from my alma mater, the University of Arizona, the same year I was born. Jim said John picked up tendencies of a “flower child” at the UA, and that John was a man whose idea of shooting animals in the desert meant simply photographing them.
We learned John was immediately drafted by the Army upon graduation from the UA and was sent to basic training at Fort Ord. According to his brother, John was apprehensive about being a soldier (a soldier’s job is to kill), but ultimately was more worried about the safety of his fellow soldiers. He had a special aptitude and became his unit’s Machine Gunner. Four months later, on October 12, 1970, John S. Hunt was killed in action, protecting a helicopter rescue which was being over-run by enemy soldiers. His efforts were awarded with a Silver Star.
And that’s only the beginning of John’s story. And John’s is only one name.
5 comments
August 31, 2007 - 6:32 pm
This is a surpassingly beautiful article. It reminds the antisocialist of something else he’s read, something by his favorite writer, Karl Jay Shapiro:
VIETNAM MEMORIAL
It lies on its side in the grassy Mall
A capsized V, a skeletal
Half-sunken hull of a lost cause
Between the Washington Monument and the Capitol.
To see it you descend a downward path
And stare up at the blackened decks of names,
Army of names that holds this cenotaph
Shimmering in shadow in the fosse.
Topside you can hear children at their games,
Down in this trench there is no gab,
Someone lays flowers under a name that was,
Our eyes like seaworms crawl across the slab.
Coasting the fifty-thousand here who died,
We surface breathless, come up bleary-eyed.
Doesn’t that say it all? How fifty-thousand names are not names at all but rather represent, each and every single one, a human being who was once living and vital and breathing, as you and I are now. Not to sound sententious here, as I know I do, but when you stop and consider it, it really is no small thing at all.
Thank you for this.
September 14, 2007 - 10:00 am
This was the most amazing day for me. I’m 42 and I’d never seen our nation’s capitol. The monuments were amazing, and visiting the National Gallery was almost a religious experience (I looked like a complete idiot standing in a room full of Degas paintings with my mouth hanging open, and walking up to the paintings and putting my head as close to the artwork as I could without getting tackled by the guards so I could look at the actual brushstrokes). But truly the highlight of that day was a series of events related to the taking of this photo. From my startlingly sensitive 14 year-old Vietnam War officionado son reminding me to do it (I honestly never would have remembered), to Christine lying on the ground to take the picture (and I mean hair and bare arms and all–I have a photo!), it illustrated beautifully the things I must always remember to be thankful for: family, friends and country. You can see Christine’s talent in the photo–but a comment she made later truly illustrates why her ability to take amazing photos extends beyond just making things look nice. WE had been talking about photography in general, and as a business, and all the struggles and frustrations that go along with it, and she suddenly remembered Johnny’s photo. She literally “lit up” with the memory of that one picture and told me “If this photo means something–brings Johnny back even a little–to someone now or in the future…if someone’s children or grandchildren see this and it reminds them of their family history…that’s really something! That’s what I want my pictures to do!”
Enough said. 
September 14, 2007 - 7:47 pm
Excellent post, Miette. Thank you.
September 15, 2007 - 7:42 am
Christine, the photograph of the Viet Nam Monument arrived at our house. It is very touching.
Many years have passed since the war and losing my brother. Seeing the wall, his name, and the Washington Monument in the reflection adds a new perspective to the memories. The Washington monument symbolizes what America is about and the need to defend our way of life. Better yet, your presentation brings visual poetry to the thanks we express to our lost soldiers.
The good news is we just redid our floors and staircase and are now putting a “rogue’s gallery” on the staircases walls. You have given us the perfect entry for Johnny!
Thanks ever so much from all of us and if you ever come to California lets get together. Better yet, bring Steve and Miette and we can really party!
November 2, 2007 - 9:25 pm
sounds like an invitation I couldn’t refuse! enjoy…
© 2011 christine gacharná | All Rights Reserved.
5 comments
Lisa Stein - Beautiful photos, love the last studio shot with Daddy!
John & Daniella Atilano - Dear Christine,
Thank you so much for the great day and the awesome photos! It is extremely generous of you to volunteer your time for this incredible program. You have an extraordinary eye and a natural talent for capturing life’s special moments. Looking forward to seeing the rest of the photos!
Sincerely,
John, Daniella, John & Joseph
pxa - Wow! Those are really cool!
John and Rosalie Ati - These pictures have brought tears and joy to our hearts and our eyes!These picture are absolutely incredible! We thank God that our son is home with his beautiful wife and children. We also thank God for selfless people like you who have captured a divine appreciation for the gift of life and some wonderful moments in time.Thank you so very muchJohn and Rosalie Atilano
gina grimaldi - Hi Christine,
The pictures were awsome can’t wait to see the other ones. Sorry I was so slow responding but, I have had computer problems and could not access my
e-mail.
I still am talking about the pictures you showed me of the caterpillars…..
You do incredible work and I really appreciate the time and effort you took to photograph John, Daniella and the boys
Thank you and God Bless,
Gina Grimaldi (Nana “G”)