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Sunday, November 11, 2001




GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Thomas Sharkey plays cards with his daughter, 5-year-old
Ellen. Sharkey has had to take on the duties of two parents
while learning to cope with the frequent deployments of his
wife, Army Maj. Mary Ann Gilgallon.



Some military couples
break traditional
parental roles

Tom Sharkey doesn't mind being
the main caregiver for his child

AT YOUR SERVICE
FOR YOUR BENEFIT


By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

Wheeler resident Tom Sharkey takes his reversal of roles in stride.

His wife, Army Maj. Mary Ann Gilgallon, is among the 514,050 service members married to a civilian and with a child, according to the Military Family Resource Center. The couple, like many military families today, are confronted with more frequent deployments and more time away from each other.

Gilgallon sometimes spends more than 12 hours a day working as the operations chief for the 45th Corps Support Group (Forward).


GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
A working mom arriving home is always a welcome sight as
Ellen Sharkey, 5, greets her mom, Army Maj. Mary Ann Gilgallon.



Sharkey, 35, says he doesn't mind being the spouse who gets the couple's 5-year-old daughter ready for school each morning, prepares her lunches, lays out her clothes, drives her to Wheeler Elementary School, spends days as a teacher's aide, carts her to gymnastics and piano lessons before preparing dinner, and bathes and tucks her into bed after reading a few passages of her favorite bedtime tale.

"Actually, my wife and I try to share the bath and the time we spend together reading bedtime stories to our daughter," Sharkey says. "It works really well. My wife and I have this wonderful partnership."

It also helps because of Sharkey's flexible schedule as a pilot with Aloha Island Air.

Although he is qualified to fly 737 jets for Island Air, Sharkey says he chose to captain the DASH-8 turbo propeller planes because he flies only 15 to 19 days a month and schedules most of his flights on the weekends, when his wife can be home with their daughter, Ellen.

"Our lives are focused around our daughter," Sharkey says. "I think that's the most important thing. When she gets older, I hope she will have learned to take care of her children as well as we do her."

In the past two decades since the military became an all-volunteer force, the number of military family members has outnumbered service members 60 percent to 40 percent. The Military Family Resources Center reports that today, 55 percent of service members are married. More than 630,000 service members have children that altogether total 1.2 million.

Gilgallon, a 1985 West Point graduate, says both she and her husband tried to hold jobs with the military after Ellen was born.

"It was definitely a conscious choice not to have both of us remain in uniform," says Gilgallon, who is on track to be promoted to lieutenant colonel in the spring. "After trying for a year, we decided something had to give.

"I think I was enjoying it more than he was," she says.

Sharkey said it was easier for him once he got hired by Island Air in 1999. Married for 11 years, they have been in the islands for more than four years. The couple met while they were both stationed in Germany in 1988 and were married two years later.

For a while, Sharkey was a full-time member of the Hawaii Army National Guard's 193rd Aviation Regiment at Wheeler Army Air Field, working as an inspector of military helicopters. He had spent 13 years in the military before he left to join Island Air.

A 1998 report by the Military Family Institute of Marywood University noted that husbands like Sharkey, who had prior military experience, were "more understanding of their wives' military goals" and had a "better understanding of how to cope with the stress of military life."

Gilgallon says her job at Schofield takes her out of the state at least half the year.

"I've been to Thailand five times already, Korea for a month-long exercise and at least twice a year to the mainland on business," she says.

So the job of packing Ellen's lunch and making sure she has the proper uniform -- students at the Leeward Oahu school wear shorts or skirts with yellow or gray T-shirts embossed with "Wheeler Warriors" on the front -- falls to dad each morning.

Mom is generally out of the house each morning by 5:15 for physical training and returns by 7 a.m. to shower and prepare for a day that sometimes runs to 7 at night.

It's also dad who volunteers as a teacher's aide at Wheeler Elementary School.

"I help wherever I can ... tie shoes, paste, cut, fix people's folders and just help out throughout the day," he says.

"At one time, my daughter's kindergarten teacher asked me if I had a job, adding she wished all her parents participated as much."

On Tuesday and Thursday after class, Ellen has gymnastic practice at Wheeler or piano lessons in town. Sharkey says he even has renewed his interest in piano and started taking lessons again two years ago with Ellen's teacher, Angie Bee Ling Keller.

A lot of dual-career military couples end up having to hire a nanny, Gilgallon says, "or if they can't find someone to come in and live with them, they may have to send their children back to the mainland to live with relatives when they have to deploy."

She knows of a couple whose situation is even more unusual than hers. The husband of a friend, a fellow West Point graduate stationed at Fort Shafter, not only stays home with the couple's five children, but also home-schools them.

Both Sharkey and Gilgallon hope to have a bigger family.

"I'd love to have a couple of more kids," Sharkey says. "As long as I have the schedule I can control, I'll keep this going as long as I can."



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