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March 20, 2003
Keeping life normal helps Flagler family cope
By JAMES MILLER | News-Journal Staff Writer
PALM COAST — Look through the mail. Answer the phone. Stand in front of the television.
Seeking news |
"Well, there's nothing I can do. If I sit here, walk around and cry, whatever, that ain't going to help nothing," 22-year-old Tracee Schiller said.
Tracee Schiller's husband of almost three years, 23-year-old Gary Schiller, is an Airman Ordnance 3rd Class on the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, the core of an aircraft carrier group based in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Oman.
While Gary inputs ordnance records into a computer aboard his ship, known in the Navy as the "TR," Tracee works at RV Having Fun!, a sales, service and parts store in Palm Coast owned by her husband's father, Jerry Schiller.
Thursday morning, Tracee and Jerry Schiller came to work like any other day. Fill the soda machine. Balance the checkbook. Help a customer. Glance at the TV as shrill air-raid sirens wail in Kuwait City.
The family never knows where Gary is, his father said.
"You ask him, and he says, 'I'm right where I'm supposed to be,' " he said. "The only way you can tell is by the time he calls."
The Schillers don't worry about Gary all the time. Like Tracee said, there's nothing they can do. Plus, having him gone is nothing new. Gary spent 159 days aboard the carrier after Sept. 11.
And at least he's not in the Marines, pressed up against the Iraqi border, fighting off sandstorms and worrying about chemical weapons attacks.
"I feel bad for those guys – the front line guys," Tracee said.
Jerry doesn't fret about his son's safety, at least not too much.
"There are nine or 10 ships around him that aren't going to let anything get to him," he said.
The day at work is almost routine, but little things gain new meaning.
At one point, Fox News disappeared from the television screen.
"How come our satellite is going out?" Jerry Schiller asked.
Tracee Schiller scrolled through the channels. CNN, the little window into her husband's world, appeared, and with it a normal pace returned for a day that was anything but normal.