Group photographs sailors’ reunions
JACKSONVILLE (AP) – After four deployments, Venus Byrd knows exactly how special it feels to have her husband come home.
Until recently, though, the experience of the return – the first kiss, the tears of joy in her children’s eyes, the entire drama of the moment – while they were all happy memories, there was nothing physical to tie them down.
Then Operation: Love Reunited stepped in.
A nonprofit organization that hooks up photographers with military families, an OpLove photographer was on hand to capture Chief Petty Officer Jeremy Byrd’s homecoming when the USS Franklin Roosevelt returned to Mayport Naval Station.
“It was nice not telling my friend to take all the pictures and send them to me,” said Venus Byrd, an inveterate scrapbooker. “I was able to relax a little bit more and not have to worry about it.”
That worrying was left up to one of a dozen or so photographers in the Jacksonville area who have signed up with OpLove, a national group started by a military wife in Denver a few years ago. Photographers with the group will take photos of homecomings and deployments, as well as military-themed shoots of families of deployed troops, providing free albums to the families.
“You may have it has a mental memory,” photographer Adam White said about the return, “but years later down the road you’re going to want to see the mixture of joy and excitement.”
White’s in the Navy himself, a petty officer first class who works as an aviation machinist, but photography has been a lifelong avocation.
Knowing what it’s like to deploy prompted him to sign up to use his skills when he was contacted by Amy McCall, coordinator of the Jacksonville branch of the organization.
“It’s a comforting feeling to know there is the OpLove group,” he said. “I would definitely be asking someone to do this for me.”
McCall joined the group about a year ago but said she soon discovered that it wasn’t very active. Around the beginning of this year, she volunteered to serve as local coordinator and started signing up other photographers.
Prospective photographers have to submit their work to the main office to be judged for quality. They also have to agree to adhere to OpLove’s rules, like not charging for their work.
Though McCall didn’t have a military connection at the time (her son has since enlisted), she fell in love with the idea.
“It humbles me to think of these people who live every day without their spouse there,” she said. “I’m grateful for them.”
As the group has grown, families at Mayport Naval Station and Jacksonville Naval Air Station have started signing up. Military families can request two shoots a year: one while the military member is deployed or being deployed and one when he or she returns.
An album with the photographs are sent directly to the deployed service member, giving them a connection to home.
“He’s going to be so shocked,” Navy wife Amy Shelton said about the photos McCall recently took of her family to send to her husband.
Her husband, Senior Chief Petty Officer Rick Shelton, got home from an augmentee assignment in Afghanistan 10 months ago and deployed on a ship in February, so keeping connected is a priority.
“It’s a godsend,” Amy Shelton said about OpLove. “I can’t express enough about it.”
Photographers with the group don’t charge a sitting fee and provide a free album or CD of the photos. Other services are at the photographer’s discretion; many, for example, will sell additional prints at a discount.