[ WAR IN IRAQ ]
Tons of mail
await USS LincolnThe packages and letters will
be a morale booster for the
crew, which arrrives SaturdayWhen the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln docks at Pearl Harbor's Hotel pier Saturday, the crew's welcome will include at least 80,000 pounds of mail accumulated over three weeks.
"E-mail is great," said Navy Petty Officer Tony Zarate, postal supervisor for the Pearl Harbor Mail Center, yesterday, "but you can't send cookies through e-mail."
For nearly a month, there have been packages and mail, carefully sorted and stored in orange canvas sacks in 145 cages, at a Pearl Harbor warehouse just a half-mile from where the 1,000-foot carrier will tie up on Saturday.
"We've been getting about 5,000 pounds of mail a day," said Zarate, who noted that the nearly 6,000 sailors and aviators on the Lincoln have not gotten a mail call in at least two weeks.
Zarate, a 12-year Navy veteran, estimated that there were at least 60,000 pounds of letters and packages already here with an additional 20,000 pounds expected at Pearl Harbor before Saturday.
"Getting mail is a real morale booster," said Zarate, who has been on six overseas deployments.
"Sailors would even skip a meal to line up for mail call," added Petty Officer Marvin Harris, a postal clerk, as he crated sacks that were delivered to Pearl Harbor from the post office yesterday morning.
For the past week, Zarate's crew of four active-duty sailors, four reservists and 11 civilians have been busy putting the orange bags of letters and packages into 4-by-4-foot cardboard boxes.
He estimates that by Saturday there will be enough boxes to fill eight semitrailers. His job is to get these boxes to Hotel Pier by 6 a.m. so that they can be craned aboard the Lincoln as soon as it docks.
Harris said some of the mail bound for the Lincoln and stored at Pearl Harbor was sent as late as January before the war broke out in Iraq in March.
Some of the packages are decorated with pictures of families and kids on the outside," he said. "Others have messages like 'We miss you' or 'Can't wait to see you.'"
The Lincoln has been at sea since late July on one of the longest deployments since the Vietnam War.
The carrier, with several of the warships in its battle group, will be stopping here briefly before going to San Diego to unload its air wing and then finally to its home port at Everett Naval Station in Washington. Two Pearl Harbor warships -- the frigate USS Reuben James and destroyer USS Paul Hamilton -- are part of the battle group.
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