Brad Horn/Nevada Appeal
VIRGINIA CITY HIGHLANDS " Fifteen-year-old Jessy marks the future in weekends.
"There's, like, five left," she said.
Five free weekends before her mother deploys for a year to Iraq with the Nevada Army National Guard in April. Five weekends that First Lt. Tammy Sparkes will spend at home, not working, not preparing, just being Mom.
"I love being around her now," Jessy said, atypically for a teenage girl. "I hate it when she goes to work. I want to spend tons of time with her."
Sparkes knew it could come to this. And she's ready.
"I'm not really nervous because they've given us a lot of training," she said. "They've been preparing us really good."
But there is no training for the three girls " Jessy, Brittany, 10, and Sierra, 3 " whose mother will be gone for a year.
"They do pretty good with it," Sparkes said. "They're sad, but I think they keep it to themselves because they know it's hard on everyone. They're proud, but they're sad."
A mom
Sparkes, 36, returned to her Virginia City Highlands home on a recent evening from work where she's a full-time National Guard employee.
Before even changing out of her Army uniform, she begins dinner.
Dressed in a Cinderella costume, 3-year-old Sierra wants to help. Sparkes lifts her baby onto the counter and the two measure and pour the ingredients together.
Her husband, Dana, 40, sits at the counter talking to her. The home-cooked meals will be fewer once she leaves.
"The microwave will be my friend," he said.
Jessy and her friend, Kasi O'Rayeh, 17, come into the kitchen.
"What's with the button-up shirt," Jessy asks her stepdad.
"What's with the make-up?" Dana retorts.
"Whatev," Jessy responds.
Sparkes puts the manicotti in the oven to bake, and Sierra runs through the kitchen, pushing her cat in a doll stroller.
This, Sparkes said, is what she'll miss the most.
"I love cooking and playing with the kids," she said. "That's probably going to be the biggest issue."
A Soldier
Sparkes grew up in Dayton and finished high school in Gerlach. She graduated early from high school because, "I was a teenager who knew everything."
"I found out the hard way it wasn't that easy," she said. "I pretty much had to hit rock bottom."
Her way up was the military. She enlisted in the Navy in 1991 and served three years active duty.
"I love the military," she said. "I know I wouldn't be where I am today without it. They make me want to be better than I am."
But the life in the Navy wasn't what she wanted. Her husband was on active duty and they moved every two years. Whenever he deployed, she was left to care for the two girls alone.
"The military does put a strain on a marriage," she said. "But I was young and stupid, too."
In 2001, after going to school and working miscellaneous jobs she didn't enjoy, she joined the National Guard. She divorced her first husband.
Sparkes started dating Dana, a 20-year veteran of the Guard, in 2003, and married him the next year.
He retired from the Guard nearly two years ago and now teaches ROTC at Incline High School.
His history in the military is helpful, he said, as other family members fear the worst.
"I worry about her coming into harm's way, but it makes it way easier having an insight as to what she can expect," he said.
Sparkes, the platoon leader of about 30 soldiers in the 1864th Transportation
Company, will be the convoy commander taking supplies and equipment to support troops inside Iraq.
She intends to make a career out of the National Guard.
"Oh shoot, we'd all like to be generals, but I don't know how far I'll get with that," she said. "But I'll see how close I come to colonel before I leave."
A Soldier mom
Brittany, 10, brings her homework into the kitchen.
It's a diorama of a scene from a book she just read, "Count the Stars."
She tells her mom that the book was about two friends in Nazi-era Germany. Brittany used Bratz dolls to represent the girls.
"I don't think that's how they dressed in World War II," Sparkes tells her middle daughter.
Being a mom, she said, isn't so different than being a platoon leader.
"Soldiers are like kids " oh, they'll hate it if they hear that," she said. "You have to make sure your kids are fed and clothed and doing their homework. It's the same thing when you're out on a mission. Only it's a little more critical. Instead of making sure their homework is done, you're making sure they have their weapons."
She's lucky, she said, to not have to worry about home while she's away.
"My husband's very responsible," she said. "I won't have to worry about if the bills are being paid, the kids are being picked up from school or that they're eating right. When you have a good family that supports you back home, you're able to concentrate and excel."
She was the one to stay home when her ex-husband deployed so she knows first-hand the struggles that await Dana as he tends to home, family and their three dogs, two cats, one bird and one fish.
"He gets the zoo," she said. "It's a lot of work to be left at home. We're a team. Now he's left behind to deal with the things two people were used to doing."
With family living nearby and the girls all pitching in, Dana said he'll have plenty of help.
Jessy and Kasi start doing the dinner dishes. As Sparkes walks past the sink, she snaps Kasi with a dish towel. The kitchen erupts into screams and laughter as everyone joins in the tussle.
Dana pushes his chair back from the table.
"With three girls, there's a lot of drama," he said. "But we'll be all right."
- Contact reporter Teri Vance at tvance@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1272.