At the moment, as far as her mother knows, Williston Park native Kelly Fay is on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz somewhere in the South Pacific.
That’s where the 29-year-old daughter of the late Williston Park Mayor Vincent Fay and granddaughter of former Williston Park Mayor Roger Fay has been for the past nine months.
But for security reasons, the young U.S. Navy seaman is unable to say where exactly in the South Pacific the Nimitz is patrolling.
“They’ve been out since March,” said Linda Fay, Kelly’s mother. “I hope to see her soon. I have no idea when the ship’s coming in.”
Linda Fay has been awaiting word of when the Nimitz will return to the West Coast for a few months now with tickets for a flight to San Diego to see her daughter.
The youngest of four daughters, Kelly is in the second year of a four-year Navy commitment, her mother said.
“She’s in avionics maintenance. She repairs the computer part of the planes,” Linda said.
Kelly attended a school in Florida after basic training to learn her complex craft.
All Linda Fay knows about her daughter’s current deployment is that the Nimitz departed from San Diego nine months ago on a mission called Rim of the Pacific.
Her daughter is permitted to convey messages by Facebook and telephone about what ports the ship has stopped in. So far, the stops have included Dubai, Korea and the Philipines. She said Kelly was particularly pleased to sleep in a bed for the first time in months and take a shower when she went ashore in Dubai.
“She said it’s very interesting when they do go into a port,” Linda Fay said.
Kelly Fay’s decision to enlist in the Navy had nothing to do with her late father’s service in the U.S. Air Force or her grandfather’s U.S. Army service during World War II, according to her mother.
“I’m sort of proud that she did enlist,” her grandfather, Roger Fay, said.
He said he told her that she was doing the same job in the Navy – maintaining airplanes – as her father did in the Air Force.
After graduating Mineola High School in 2002, Linda said, Kelly earned a bachelors degree in speech therapy at the University of Rhode Island. She had started worked on a masters degree in speech therapy at New York University but then changed direction.
She attended school at the Universal Technical Institute for two years, graduating with a degree in automotive technology. That experience with diagnostic testing on cars prompted her to join the Navy, her mother said.
“She’s just a free spirit and likes to travel,” her mother said. “She called me up one day and said she was thinking of joining the Navy.”
While attending the University of Rhode Island, she said Kelly did a study abroad program in New Zealand. As a graduation present, she gave her daughter a round-trip ticket to New Zealand to visit a close friend she’d made there during her time studying there.
“She was always the adventurous one,” Linda Fay said.
Now, as she awaits word that her daughter is headed stateside and the chance to see her again, Linda’s concerned about what may happen during her current mission.
“Right now I’m very worried about the situation,” she said.
