Tonight, Tori, 17; Danny Jr., 16; and McKinnon, 14, will appear at halftime on the Celtics' football field with the rest of the court. Kelly will e-mail her husband updates if backup quarterback Danny Jr. gets to play against South Salem. Tori will be cheerleading. Some generous dad usually e-mails a play by play about McKinnon's freshman game.
"Honestly, I feel sadder for my husband. Good or bad, life goes on and I've gotten to experience all of it," says Kelly, 41. "When he gets home (in May), we'll almost be driving Tori to college."
Courtesy of the Hokanson familyThe Hokanson children in a painting by Dan Hokanson's mother, Diann HokansonSince Hokanson asked her to dance at a San Jose, Calif., bar under somewhat false circumstances (he was, in fact, a West Point graduate in aerospace engineering and a pilot, and NOT the janitor; she was, at 20, a bit too young to be dancing there at all), they have been married to the military, and then each other. But there's nothing like the milestones of middle age to reveal the effort an all-volunteer army takes.
Tori was born at Fort Hood, Texas; Danny in Fayetteville, N.C., near Fort Bragg; and McKinnon in Yuma, Ariz., between tour stations. The family followed Hokanson through his Army career, a brief stint as a civilian and into the Guard. They moved to Monterey, Calif., where he went to the Naval Postgraduate School for his first master's degree, in international security and civil-military relations, and to Rhode Island, where he earned his second master's, in national security and strategic decision-making. In 2001, they moved to Oregon when Hokanson took over the Oregon Army National Guard's medical evacuation unit, the Black Hawks.
This felt like home. Hokanson grew up on the Klamath River in the California mill town of Happy Camp with 26 in his high school class. The second of seven children of a teacher and artist, he put himself through junior college until he was accepted at West Point. Kelly, who grew up the youngest of eight, loved finding the child-friendly Keizer.
Besides, Keizer was close to the Salem airport. Hokanson saw the Black Hawk unit with its top pilots as woefully underused. Mount Hood and the Oregon forests offered some of the best rescue training possible. With no money to run a full-time squad, he built an on-call list and cut the response time to less than an hour. He flew 50 rescue missions and commanded 100 more. For three and a half years, his pager went off constantly.
"In bed, in movies," Kelly says. "We were on a cruise ship pulling away from the dock and he was walking around trying to find a place he could hear."
Danny recalls, "He was taking me to a Halloween party in fifth grade when this tree fell on a logger, so he handed me the phone and had me call, like, 30 people" while Hokanson drove.
"He dropped me off at Tori's best friend's house," McKinnon says.
You don't complain, though, when someone's life is in danger, Kelly says. "And he loved what he was doing. It was really kind of a calling. That made it easier when it was, like, what do you mean you're dropping the kids off with me while I'm in a college class?"
Then, in 2005, another move. Every year, the Army selects one officer to be a national security fellow at Harvard University, and in 2005 it was Hokanson.
"We've spent a lot more time with our siblings than most people," Tori says. "We didn't have a lot of friends to hang out with, we had to rely on each other, so we get along really well."
Tori says the family knew that after Sept. 11, 2001, Dad would eventually go to war, and in 2006 he did, to Afghanistan, as soon as he finished at Harvard.
"Afghanistan was the worst," Danny says. "We were used to him, used to being together."
Kelly had also just lost her widowed mother after a grueling fight with cancer. She took the kids back to Keizer -- the 17th move in 16 years.
Then, nine months into Hokanson's deployment, Kelly, a runner, could no longer get her breath. Doctors discovered a mass on her lung, and Hokanson flew home on emergency leave. At the airport, the boys raced past him in their excitement. He was dumbstruck. Danny had grown 5 inches since he deployed. McKinnon, 8.
Kelly underwent the removal of part of her lung, but the tumor was not malignant. Life soon focused on the Iraq deployment, which consumed a year of Hokanson's time before leaving in May.
In the harried months before deploying, the kids say, their dad tried to give them one on one time -- Danny golfing, McKinnon to shoot clay pigeons and Tori out for a picnic and out for ice cream. Sundays are dedicated to family breakfast after Mass at St. Edward Catholic Church.
Kelly, who teaches health education, decided to substitute teach this year to better keep the family together. She bought two BlackBerrys so she and Tori could both receive Hokanson's e-mails instantly. The couple exchange a song of the day -- "usually something from the '80s." She e-mails pictures.
Still, she runs alone. She bought the 42-inch television, replaced the washer and dryer, repainted alone. She is, she admits, a more nervous driving teacher for the kids than he is.
"I'm, like, slow down. I freak out." She wonders, is he going to teach the boys to shave via Skype?
How do you parent from half a world away?
"You marry the most wonderful person you ever met and trust her. I rely on Kelly more than anything -- she is the love of my life," Hokanson wrote in an e-mail from Iraq on Tuesday. "Our kids are a direct reflection of the sacrifices she has made."
He says he writes letters, e-mails, helps with math problems over the phone and tries to use Skype, an Internet video and voice program, once a week. "I also pray a lot."
On the second floor landing of the family home hangs a large portrait by Hokanson's mother, the artist Diann Hokanson, of the children in grade school dressed in their dad's West Point dress grays. The piece is called, "The Colonel's Children."
The night before he left for final training in Georgia, Hokanson escorted Tori to the stage, where she was crowned Keizer's Junior Miss. She plans to use the $5,000 scholarship toward becoming a dentist. Only recently, she says, has she realized something about her dad and herself.
"I'm a lot like him, driven-wise," she says. "He always wanted to go somewhere in life, and so do I."
The boys have also discovered their drive. McKinnon sees his future in the Army; Danny wants to attend West Point.
Having a spouse in the military and a child in the military are completely different, Kelly says, but the boys certainly know the life they would be getting into.
As she stands with her visiting father-in-law, Bob, and other McNary parents after Monday's presentation, her friend Darcie Jones, whose two daughters were also on the homecoming court, asks, "Where's Dan?"
"Every time we have moments like this, I say, 'Where's Dan?'" she says to Kelly. "It's these life moments he misses and we miss him. I'd be a lot more crabby about it than you are."
The colonel's wife just smiles, raises her camera and clicks.
I can't believe our little baby girl is 6 tomorrow! Today she told me that I am a lot of things she wants to be when she grows up. For example, I am a mom, a painter, a yarner (knitter) a jewelry fixer. She said those things were my function in life.
Brad sat down this week with his wooden shape/number sorter clock. He showed it to me and said, "Mom this is my holey cock!" Guess we should work on those l sounds.
