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!

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.

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.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, these were the first of many deployment photos I would take that would eventually lead me to Operation: Love Re-United. I’m honored to have been selected as a participating photography studio in this program to support military families with FREE portraits as the Active-Duty, Guard or Reserve member prepares to deploy or returns home from a deployment.

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.

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!):

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.