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A hug-filled return

BY JULIA NEYMAN | Newsday Staff Writer

August 5, 2006

During the year that Army Staff Sgt. Eric Rivera was in Iraq, his wife, Theresa, did not wash his clothes. She saved every voice mail and e-mail he sent her, just in case. She wore his dog tags around her neck when she breast-fed their infant daughter, Emma.

Rivera distracted himself from the heartache of missing Theresa, Emma, 16 months, and their son, Eric Jr., 3, by immersing himself in his job training Iraqi soldiers in Baqouba and gathering intelligence on insurgents.

He also kept his wife calm by telling her he was working a desk job when he was kicking in doors and battling through firefights.

"I lied to her for the longest time I was there," said Rivera, 30, an electrician by trade. "I told her I was over there doing staff work. I tried not to tell her that we were going out there, getting shot at and hitting roadside bombs."

The nightmare of constant worries and sporadic phone calls ended Thursday night when Rivera returned to his Islip Terrace home, driving a new black Chevy Colorado that he had bought in Indiana, where his unit landed stateside.

"It was fabulous," Rivera said Friday. "The whole neighborhood was out there - my parents, my closest friends, my family."

Hours earlier, as he sped down the New Jersey Turnpike and Theresa waited at the house with family and neighbors, both said they most looked forward to one simple thing: a hug.

"I feel so blessed that he's even coming home," Theresa, 32, said. "I can't wait to actually be there to hug him, pinch him a lot to make sure he's still here."

The last time Theresa had seen Eric, he had come home for two weeks in April after being in Iraq for eight months. Theresa said seeing him - and then letting him go - was harder than she had expected.

"We purposefully planned his leave to be one of the last ones because it would be closer to him coming home," Theresa said. "But it was just as hard as when he left the first time."

The family communicated online and over the phone, but the separation was unbearable, the couple said.

Eric relied on the men on his team for support, most of them noncommissioned officers who also had family back home. Theresa, a schoolteacher who had taken the year off to care for her kids, relied on friends and the community.

Although the Riveras knew Eric's deployment was only supposed to be a year, it wasn't until last week that Theresa found out his exact arrival date. For the first time in 15 months, she heaved a sigh of relief.

As for Eric, he says 12 years in the Army Reserve has been more than enough, and that he would "fight tooth and nail" against another deployment.

"I've paid my due," he said as he drove down the turnpike toward home. "Now I just want to hug my kids and my wife."