Westover VTC connects new family; deployed dad sees newborn son for first time

  • Published
  • By Andre Bowser
  • 439th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
WESTOVER AIR RESERVE BASE, Mass. --  A deployed aerial porter laid eyes on his newborn son for the first time via satellite after deploying to Iraq in April.

It was a moment that Senior Airman William Clark could barely describe in words Tuesday morning from halfway around the world at Joint Base Ballad.

The 26-year-old new father sighed and said, "I don't know... He's definitely smaller than I anticipated ... from 7,000 miles away."

With local newspaper and television news media surrounding Sabrina Clark, the wife of Airman Clark, the new family participated in a video teleconference (VTC) coordinated by the base Airman and Family Readiness Center.

The star of the show: A 5-week-old, bouncing-baby boy. Spencer Thomas Clark, who smiled and cooed in the arms of his mother Sabrina, made his debut to his dad with grandparents seated nearby in the VTC room of the base conference center.

Sabrina Clark held her son so that her husband could see the baby boy -- a mirror image of his father.

"Can you see your daddy?" she asked little Spencer. The toddler briefly held his hand up into the air.

The connection, afforded to deployed service members who request the opportunity to visit with loved ones via satellite, extended to multiple generations of the Clark family in the room, as well.

Talking to her son across many miles and through a 32-inch television hooked up to a camera, Mary Pat Clark asked a motherly question: "What did you do with your hair?"

Airman Clark, who had left Westover with a closely cropped haircut and now sat before his family with a somewhat fuller head of hair, simply replied, "It takes too much time to go to the barber here."

The Clarks live in Ware, Mass., and Airman Clark is stationed with the 42nd Aerial Port Squadron forward deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

William Clark's father, Jay Clark, was present at the birth of his grandson and cut the umbilical cord.

Jay Clark said it was definitely a good feeling to be able to stand in for his son at the birth of his grandchild.

"I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity," Jay Clark said of his grandchild's birth on June 24, just before 8 p.m. "He looks so much like my son."