Editor's note: For nearly nine years, Utahns have left their families to go to war. This is the second of a two-part series about what it's like to leave and return home.
KAYSVILLE — Lt. Col. Brad Lyons spent his 13th wedding anniversary and his 40th birthday flying sorties over Afghanistan. But for Father's Day, he's right where he wants to be, playing catch and hugging the boy he calls "my world."
His son, Jack, 10, blushes at the words, immensely pleased. His own plans include sticking as close as he can to his dad, who just got back a couple of weeks ago from a third deployment to Afghanistan.
Lyons leads the 34th Fighter Squadron, which is slated to be deactivated July 16.
In 17 years with the Air Force, Lyons has experienced a lot of hellos and goodbyes, served both stateside and overseas and has missed spending pretty much every holiday or anniversary with his wife, Dawn, and Jack at least once.
"It's something we happily do for love of country," Lyons said. But it gets harder, he adds, because of the boy. And technology like Skype, which he used for the first time this last tour, helps. But it will never trump a game of catch in the backyard at the end of a tough day.
When Lyons was 6, he knew he wanted to be a pilot. He took his first lesson at 16, in a Georgia Cessna 150. "I learned on a grassy strip. You go up one time and you either love it or you don't. I did. I got my license at 17."
There were greater loves, though, yet to come. In an e-mail, the fighter pilot tries to explain what being a dad means to him.
"I was there in the hospital room when he was born and my first thoughts were that he truly was a gift from God. I was thankful that I had the opportunity to be there for his birth, because so many military families are not so lucky.
"I remember thinking that I wanted to protect him from all the evils in the world and wanted him only to know happiness in his life. I know that is unrealistic, of course, but that is what I wanted for him. In that moment, I also realized that I had spent a lifetime working on a career I could be proud of — but that my true legacy would be measured by how well I did as his dad. It was a daunting realization."
Jack was 3 years old when his dad came home from seven months in the Iraqi Freedom campaign. He worried then that the toddler wouldn't know him. It didn't happen; Jack was even a little clingy at first.
His wife, Dawn, takes deployment more in stride. A military brat like her husband — her dad was an Army officer and so was his — she was an Air Force intelligence officer when she and Brad met in Korea. As a family they also lived in Japan for four years. Ask Jack where he'd like to go for dinner and he directs you to sushi. Did he learn Japanese? a reporter asks.
Brad Lyons laughs. "He was trying to learn English back then."
What is hard, says Dawn, is war. And recently, he has been in the thick of a lot of it.
When she was active duty in Saudi Arabia, Dawn Lyons says, "there were no-fly zones, but no one was shooting. I used to go downtown to Riyadh. He's never experienced that."
Southerners by background (his family lives in Georgia and Florida, while her folks are in North Carolina), Brad Lyons was commissioned in 1992 and "America has been at war ever since," he says. He's fought in Iraq and on both the ground and in the air in Afghanistan. And while he's sad to see his squadron, the Rude Rams, split up, his wife and son are looking forward to the next 12 months.
Brad Lyons will be home pretty much every night. He's been deemed "promotable to colonel," a designation that sends him to school in Virginia for a year. They're moving in a couple of months.
Leaving Utah won't be easy, they agree. Dawn Lyons has been teaching sixth grade at Snow Horse Elementary School, where Jack just finished fourth grade. They've all made good friends, and Jack has enjoyed some freedoms to roam that come with their tight-knit and pretty worry-free Kaysville neighborhood. And when Brad Lyons is home, he's been able to coach the boy's football team and watch his baseball games and violin recitals.
Going to war has its own dynamic, he says. Though his family's not unused to the disciplined military life and its exits and re-entrances from different postings, they are also very aware of the risks.
"When you're going to war, it never gets better," Brad Lyons said. "My mom is very religious and she finds strength that way, but it bothers her."
Being away, though, does not mean being without family, he adds. When he got back from flying a sortie over Afghanistan on his birthday, he walked into a room festooned in black ribbons and balloons (his wife sent them over) and a surprise party from his other family, the men and women with whom he serves.
Dawn Lyons is the organizer, going all out for holidays, "conducting myself as a single parent" and holding things together when he's gone. As the wife of the squadron commander, she's had the responsibility of the Spouse's Group for the 34th. The other spouses call her Ramette One.
The best times for the family are the together times. They love the outdoors — Dawn perhaps "a little less" than the guys. Brad and Jack hunt and fish together. They have a golden retriever, Gauge, and are anxious for the arrival of Jasper, a very young yellow Labrador retriever, not quite weaned but almost ready to move in.
When they can, they vacation on home ground in the South, where Brad Lyons' dad has a place in Savannah that sits among inlets and coves and Dawn Lyons' folks live at the edge of a lake in North Carolina.
Brad Lyon's office at Hill Air Force Base is spectacularly tidy and organized, but it describes him pretty well. The placard on the desk says "Ram Boss." There's a print of a painting on one wall of Gen. Robert E, Lee, titled "The Loneliness of Command" by Mort Kunstler. Brad Lyons says he "gets" that. "It's a lot of responsibility."
There are pictures of family, including one of his father, David L. Lyons, in full uniform. He's the police chief in Garden City, Ga. Father and son share a name, but the younger David Lyons goes by his middle name, Brad.
There are photographs of military mentors and heroes, like Gen. Frank Padilla and former Secretary of the Air Force F. Whitten Peters, and a pair of giant chess pieces from the Check Mate Strategy Organization Brad Lyons was part of at the Pentagon. He was a paratrooper for two years with the 82nd Airborne, back in his captain days, and there's a souvenir of that, too.
But in the middle of it all, on a high shelf that draws the eye, sits a golden football helmet with the letters GT on the side. You cannot miss that Brad Lyons is a die-hard Georgia Tech fan. That's his alma mater. It has created a good-natured rivalry within the squadron which, gasp, harbors a University of Georgia grad or two.
"During football season, I get pretty animated," Brad Lyons laughs. "Dawn likes to be doing something else."
Then he turns serious. He's happy to be a father — and a Father's Day story. But he knows he represents others. And he doesn't want those others — his military family — overlooked.
"The military family really is a precious thing," he says. "So many are asked to sacrifice so much in many different ways."
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