Students making a visit to the school’s health clinic will see a different face this week as school nurse Jeannie Haines is away from campus spending time with her son before he gets deployed to the Ukraine.

Haine’s son, Jonathan, is a captain in the medical executive service branch with his battalion stationed in military active cities.

“They are responsible for operating the emergency services and the hospital care and the evacuations,” Haines said. “They’re the guys that are kind of behind the scenes, making sure that everything is set up.”

On top of that, Jonathan is an airborne soldier, which means that he is part of the troops that are dropped into harder to get to areas by parachutes with supplies. What first drew him into the military field is aviation, so this enables him to be very involved in evacuation and continued flights.

“His job and what he does is all about operations for all kinds of medical services, but in the emergency arena,” Haines said.

Haines and her family are very supportive of their son and his choice of career.

“It’s always that bittersweet thing because of course we’re very proud of him,” Haines said. “So far he’s been very successful.”

Already having been deployed 3 times, Jonathan is about leave again.

“We always love it when they’re stateside because then, even if they’re in another part of the country, at least we can safely get to see him,” Haines said. “But when he’s deployed, it’s very hard to know that I can’t just pick up the phone and call him. We can’t just go see him whenever we can make the arrangement and we never know when exactly we might see him again.”

At 29, Jonathan is married with four children, and is about to become a major. For communication, emailing is the best choice but mom doesn’t always come first.

“When he was in Romania we heard from him about every couple of weeks,” Haines said. “And of course his wife and children are the priority. They get the phone calls and stuff first, but we try to be patient.”

Alerted about two weeks ago he would be going to Ukraine on a humanitarian mission,  his family doesn’t know when he will be able to come home.

“It could be 13 months, maybe not so long,” Haines said. “It just depends on how many troops they pull, and where they pull them from.”