Home for the holidays

Dad makes it back from Iraq to grant daughter's wish

Friday, Dec. 26, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by GARY SMITH Home for a two-week stay from Iraq, Jimmy Howard, left, greets his daughter, Gracie. Kevin McDermott dressed up as Santa to surprise the 2-and-a-half-year-old. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Gracie Howard has a very short Christmas list this year. She's been asking Santa for two things.

"Toys," said the Bryans Road 2-and-a-half-year old. "And my daddy."

Gracie's father, Jimmy, has been in Iraq at Camp Anaconda in Balad since he was last home for a visit in August. Last year, he couldn't make it home for the holidays.

This year things were different.

Gracie's wish was going to come true, no matter how hard her mother, Sheila, had to work to make it happen.

"I knew we'd work it out," said Sheila, a 15-year veteran of the Bryans Road Volunteer Fire Department where she is a paramedic and EMS captain.

On Tuesday afternoon, Santa arrived in front of the Howard's home, riding shotgun in a Bryans Road fire truck. Hopping out of the cab, he scooped Gracie up from where she was playing in the front yard and wished her a Merry Christmas. Then, he opened the back door of the truck and revealed his reason for the early Christmas visit.

"That's my daddy," Gracie smiled when Santa, played by Kevin McDermott, opened the door.

Jimmy Howard, former U.S. Marine and current contractor for the federal government working in Baghdad, was wearing his sunglasses.

"I had to keep from having a tear," he said. "I was tearing up when we were coming around the corner."

The Howards have been married three years, having met at the fire house where they both volunteer. At the time, Jimmy was enlisted in the Marines. Sheila was the one that insisted she wasn't going to be military wife. Jimmy left the service in 2003 and was miserable.

"When he got out of the military there was a hole in him that I couldn't fill," she remembered.

The couple decided that working overseas as a contractor was a way for Jimmy to feel he was contributing to his country, much like he had done as a Marine.

While he's in Iraq, the couple talks by phone for about 10 minutes a day and communicates via e-mail at other times.

Sheila doesn't watch a lot of television, but gets news updates on goings-on in Iraq through the Internet. Jimmy comes home every four months for a two week stretch, but the first time was the toughest.

Grown accustomed to dealing with everyday life without her husband around, Sheila wasn't used to him being home and he wasn't going out of his way to fit into the family's schedule.

After a week of constant screaming matches, the two took a step back and realized the mistakes they were making. Now, because Jimmy's schedule is nine hours ahead of Maryland-time, Sheila gives him space to decompress and catch up, he does his part as well.

The holiday break will include a trip to Texas to visit Jimmy's relatives before he heads back to Iraq on Jan. 6.

"I'm just happy to be home for the holidays," he said.

And so is Gracie, who shares her Christmas cookie with her father before heading off to play with her cousins and friends.

So is Gracie a daddy's girl?

"Aren't they all," Sheila laughed.

staylor@somdnews.com