Bloom Trail grad’s ship helps relief effort on iway to Mideast deployment
From aboard the USS Nassau docked near Haiti, 19-year-old Airman Ariel Nichoson did her part to get food and medical equipment to earthquake victims.
Nichoson, a 2009 Bloom Trail High School graduate, helped helicopters land on her amphibious assault ship’s deck and chained them down. And she guided drops of supplies from helicopters while they hovered above, too.
En route to the Middle East, the USS Nassau got rerouted to Haiti, where, between Jan. 25 and Feb. 7, the ship dropped off:
57,368 meals.
1.3 million pounds of rice.
30,776 bottles of water.
3,260 pounds of medical supplies.
2,781 hand-crank radios.
80,000 jars of baby food.
“We gave them a lot of water and food supplies, and overall medical care,” she said. “We brought people on the ship to receive care.”
One of about 20 Navy ships that aided Haiti, the USS Nassau took on 16 patients, she said. It reunited a baby girl found in a cardboard box onshore with her mother.
And it dropped off more than a million pounds of rice, almost 58,000 meals, 2,700 hand-crank radios and almost 80,000 jars of baby food during its 16-day stay.
Nichoson was excited on her first deployment to join in the worldwide effort to save Haiti, even if she didn’t get to step foot on the island.
“I didn’t have the chance to get off the boat,” she said. “My job requires me to stay on board and land helicopters.”
Instead, Nichoson shot footage of the shore with a new video camera she bought before deploying to capture her adventures.
“From the boat, I could see streets and houses,” she said.
Life at sea is different
Seeing the world is what led Nichoson, who had never before left home for more than two weeks at a time, to enlist in the Navy.
Halfway through high school, Nichoson changed her college plans to the military. She had joined junior ROTC and decided the military was her ticket out.
“I wanted to do more with my life than just go to college and get a job,” she said.
Of all the branches, the Navy seemed to have the most travel options.
“I wanted to see more. With most other branches, you get stationed in one place, you don’t see as much,” she said. “Boat life is definitely a different experience than any other service.”
When Nichoson called the SouthtownStar earlier this month, she was cruising across the Atlantic Ocean, en route to the Middle East where the Nassau will remain until August.
The USS Nassau left on Jan. 18 from Norfolk, Va., and picked up 2,300 Marines in North Carolina. On Jan. 23, the ship, home to a crew of 1,200, got diverted from its original mission to the Middle East to Haiti, where a 7.0 earthquake leveled the impoverished island nation on Jan. 12, killing more than 200,000 people and leaving another million homeless.
Nichoson enlisted at age 17, before graduating and after she persuaded both parents to agree to let her join.
Her ROTC director, retired Lt. Cmdr. Dan Walsh, made sure the teenager knew what she was getting into. She had been an active member all four years, pushing herself onto one of the drill teams that didn’t have a lot of girls.
“She was dedicated to the cause. And that is the key. We try to teach the kids about hard work and the fact that it pays off,” he said.
“Ariel was keyed into that.”
Now Nichoson is an aviation boatswain’s mate handler, a job she chose so she could be outdoors and learn about aviation.
“What I really do is we land helicopters, chain down helicopters, direct them,” she said.
She can guide in a drop shipment from a helicopter while the chopper’s still in the air.
She also trained to fight fires on deck.
And the mail and other supplies that come on the ship goes through her, too.
Ah, the mail
Nichoson lives for the mail lately, because the distance is the hardest part of her deployment, she said.
She left a boyfriend at home, her mom and 5-year-old brother in South Chicago Heights, and her dad and 10-year-old brother in South Holland. The family has been tight-knit after losing her 19-year-old brother a few years ago in a car crash.
Life on a ship means no regular Internet access or phone lines, either.
“It really makes you appreciate letters and simple things that people take for granted,” she said.
But friends at home are doing the same old stuff. It’s hard to find work.
Nichoson knows she’s in the right place.
“I’m out here. I have a job,” she said. “I don’t consider it a job because I have fun when I do it.”
Read the original article from SouthTown Star.
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