Families bid goodbye to deploying National Guard soldiers

FORT DRUM — Several soldiers of a state National Guard unit received a fond farewell Saturday as they set off for an overseas deployment.

However, that farewell was not easy for the many families who filled the armory on post to say goodbye to the 87 soldiers who made up the Headquarters Company B of the 427th Brigade Support Battalion.

Spc. Christopher D. Hanno from Lowville had 15 family members attending the ceremony, from his grandmothers in their 70s to his 3-year-old nephew. The 23-year-old Spc. Hanno, who worked at the Nice N Easy store in Lowville before being activated, is leaving on his first deployment after six years in the National Guard. For Spc. Hanno, saying goodbye brought mixed emotions.

“It’s rough,” Spc. Hanno said. “You can say goodbye three or four times. It doesn’t matter how many times you do it, it’s the same emotion.”

Spc. Hanno’s father, Donald R. Hanno, said his wife, Patricia A. Hanno, cried all day before the ceremony.

“I can’t imagine him gone every day,” Mrs. Hanno said. Several of Spc. Hanno’s siblings could be seen holding back tears as they took pictures and hugged their departing brother, who managed to keep a smile on his face.

Pfc. Jared D. Panipinto, a Wayland native and a member of the National Guard for 3½ years, had his parents, his girlfriend of 3½ years and their 3-month-old baby daughter with him.

“We’re all looking forward to his coming home,” said his mother, Cynthia A. Panipinto. For the 23-year-old, the upcoming deployment, his first, was a fulfillment of something he had talked about with his mother for years.

“She knew I would do this since I was little,” Pfc. Panipinto said.

Capt. Maurice A. Amaya, the company’s commander and an accountant from Yonkers who has been in the National Guard for eight years, said one of the big challenges the unit may see is keeping lines of communication flowing, given the wide geographic distribution of the unit’s soldiers around the state.

“Keeping in touch is going to be tough, but we’ll be all right,” Capt. Amaya said.

The unit’s departure comes with some uncertainty about the location of its assignment.

While the unit was originally slated to go to Afghanistan, that was later changed to Kuwait. However, further changes have left the unit’s assignment location in question.

For now, the unit will mobilize and join an estimated 1,800 soldiers from around the state who will be assigned to the 27th Brigade Combat Team. The New York troops will join 800 National Guard soldiers from South Carolina, along with another 800 from Wisconsin, Alabama, Illinois, Florida, California, Kansas and Michigan.

The brigade will train at Camp Shelby, Miss., where it will learn its assignment.