Above: Senior Master Sergeant Joe Hernon holds Isabella “Bella” and Joey’s hands as they head home together. Hernon had just returned from his deployment to Kuwait.
Service to country takes them away but dads never really leave their loved ones
By Tami S. Scott, associate editor
When United States Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Joe Hernon, of Manlius, was deployed in Kuwait, he carried around a “flat Joey” and posed with it for pictures. The life-sized cutout created by his 5-year-old son, Joey, was part of a school project. Hernon mailed it back home where Joey could proudly present it to his preschool class and say it’s traveled the world.
Senior Master Sergeant Joe Hernon and his son Joey, 5, enjoy a tight embrace after Hernon returns home from his deployment in Kuwait.
“That was fun,” he said, smiling.
Fayetteville resident and First Sergeant (R) Ray Swift spent 13 months deployed in a combat zone in Afghanistan. He remembers tracing with his finger the lines of a picture drawn by his 3-year-old son.
“They draw you a picture and when at home, nine times out of 10 you put it on the fridge and try to figure out what it is,” he said. “When they send it to you over there, you find yourself, I know it sounds silly, but you find yourself tracing with your hand because, you know, they drew it.”
Hernon and Swift each took time with the Sun recently to share their vastly different experiences as “deployed dads” for Father’s Day. Both are communicants of Immaculate Conception (IC) Church in Fayetteville.
Checklists and pokes
Senior Master Sergeant Joe Hernon and his family hold a poster of the last item on their checklist: “Dad’s Home.” From left is Isabella (Bella), 3; wife Sara, Joey, 5, and SMSgt. Joe Hernon.
Sergeant Hernon, 38, joined the Air Force Reserve in 2004. At that time, he was neither a husband nor a father, but a young man just beginning his military career. Now, he’s a member of the 174th Air National Guard, Hancock Field, Syracuse; he’s married to his wife of 12 years, Sara; and they share two children, Joey, 9, and Isabella or “Bella”, 6.
Over 19 years, Hernon has been deployed to Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq and Djibouti, each time serving as the non-commissioned officer in charge of plans and operations for emergency management.
Fortunately, he was never deployed for combat.
“My wife and kids want me to be done as soon as possible,” said Hernon, who plans to retire in May 2026. He commented that deployments are tougher on his wife due to family responsibilities falling on her alone. For him, it’s not easy, but it’s easier, he said, because his primary focus is work; it isn’t divided.
“I remember my first deployment with kids,” he said. “I play this silly video game on the TV with my son, and the morning I was getting ready to leave, he goes, ‘Alright, well, we’ll just play later.’ And I was like, man, ‘later’ is like in the summer.” He said it was those types of interactions that would jolt him.
But modern technology like FaceTime and Zoom kept the family in regular contact. He even watched Joey make his First Communion thanks to IC’s live stream capabilities.
“I’m sitting at my desk taking pictures of a computer monitor while my wife’s in the pew,” he said. “[Experiences like those] are definitely once-in-a-lifetime stuff and you really want to be there, but, you know, obviously, [I] made a commitment to this.
Senior Master Sergeant Joe Hernon poses with “flat Joey” in Kuwait.
“The idea of going somewhere again,” he added, “I think [it] would be very traumatic to them.”
Though Sara and the kids are supportive and adapt to his absence, the family is incomplete when he’s away – their kids’ worries are voiced in a simple question when Hernon is called to serve locally in the reserves: “You’re coming home tonight?” Their concerns are quelled when Dad assures them that yes, he will be home.
One time, Sara made a list of holidays and events for the kids to check off – with each one checked off, they’d be that much closer to seeing Dad again. “So you know, Valentine’s Day. Check. My son’s field trip. Check. Bella’s concert. Check. It’s a visual, like, we’re almost there,” he said. “The last check after that should be Dad comes home.”
Upon returning from Kuwait, Hernon described how his kids expressed their excitement differently. His 6-year-old son chatted him up with all kinds of plans they had to do: “We gotta do this, this, this and this!” And his 3-year-old daughter? She was mesmerized. “She would just kind of like, poke at me. Like I wasn’t real. Because we Zoomed a lot, right? And so, to see me outside an iPad … are you real?”
In 2026, after serving 21 years, Hernon said he will be “happy to be done.” He won’t be the only one.
Faith, struggle and the role of a priest during difficult times
: 1SG Retired Ray Swift stands with his family after returning home from 13 months in Afghanistan. Pictured are his son Noah, 8; daughter, Kate, 11; and wife Cristina holding their youngest son Danny, 3.
First Sergeant Retired Ray Swift, 56, served 25 years in the United States Army and would do it all over again, he said. Service is in his blood. He married his wife Cristina while in the Army and described her as his rock: strong, selfless and supportive.
“I was blessed almost 32 years ago with the perfect woman,” he said. “A lot of guys don’t have that [support]. The military just … it takes a strong woman.”
Swift and Cristina have three children: Katie, 27; Noah, 23; and Danny, 18. And though Swift had been deployed several times throughout his career, it was his last tour in 2008 when he was in combat. That was in Afghanistan. At the time, his children were ages 11, 8 and 3, respectively.
“It’s always been difficult to be away and then, I think, anytime you’re deployed into a combat zone, or when you’re seeing combat yourself, it’s difficult,” he said. “You have to ask yourself, ‘Am I gonna make it home?’”
As would be expected, these feelings were recurring, so any communication with his family was relished. “We’d try to call as much as possible,” he said. “The phone calls are different because you appreciate the sounds. Stupid, I know, but …” Care packages would bring both smiles and tears. “Every package meant something.”
For Swift, Father’s Day isn’t a holiday he gives much thought to, saying it’s a privilege to be a father. Rather, what he missed most was watching his son Noah make his First Communion. “That was the biggest thing.”
And though Swift is a lifelong devout Catholic, he admits he struggled with his faith. In Afghanistan, Fr. Patrick McCormick, a priest from the Archdiocese of Atlanta, served as the only military priest in Kabul from 2008 to 2009. He
The Swift family pose together last month at their youngest son Danny’s Senior Night. From left is the son-in-law Braxton (Kate’s husband), Ray’s wife Cristina, Danny, Ray, Kate and Noah.
celebrated Mass every weekend at the main base, and his sermon was always based on the same topic, accompanied by one song: “Be not afraid.”
“I was like, God must have put him [here] because there were certain situations where I would struggle, and he was there. I lost a very good friend, and he was there, and he was always like, ‘Don’t be afraid.’
“Your faith also makes you …,” Swift paused before continuing, “… so, obviously we had to do, say, bad things to bad people. And you come home and when you’re decompressing … OK, there’s the 10 Commandments. Thou shall not kill. And we struggle.” He choked up. “But people like Fr. Ryan, Fr. Chris Ballard, Fr. Zach (Miller) … I’ve had good priests out there that I could talk to. [They] got me through.”
He attributes his wife to getting him through that time, too. His no. 1 concern was his troops.
“I was in charge of 200 people. I wanted to get them home,” he said. “I knew I had [her],” he said. “I didn’t have to worry about my family. I knew my kids were being taken care of. I knew everything was being taken care of back home.
“They always say [that] we come back with the battle scars and the parades are for [us],” he continued. [They] should be for the families. They’re the ones [who carry] the burdens.”
