Adventures ahead for Meadows grads

Dick Benoit

Thursday, June 14, 2001 | 8:56 a.m.

Two Meadows School graduates are headed for the blue this summer.

Lauren Carey, class of 1997, and Christina Hruska, class of 1996, are beginning new chapters in their military careers in Navy and Air Force blue.

Carey will experience her first sea duty assignment for the U.S. Navy, when she reports for duty as an ensign aboard the destroyer USS Spruance in Mayport, Fla., in July.

Hruska, a lieutenant, is headed for the wild blue yonder as a flight student in EuroNATO Joint Jet Training at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.

Carey, daughter of Gordon and Crete Carey of Las Vegas, graduated this month with the class of 2001 at the U.S. Naval Academy. She served as a squad leader during her senior year and played tennis and lacrosse during her tenure as a midshipman. She also served on the "plebe detail" last summer, welcoming new cadets to Annapolis.

One of her most exciting experiences while attending the Naval Academy, Carey said, was a summer internship with a Navy flying squadron at Norfolk Naval Air Station.

"I got to fly on one of the C-2 transport aircraft during carrier qualification exercises," she said. "We made several arrested landings and catapult take-offs from an aircraft carrier. It was quite a thrill."

Carey will learn the ropes aboard the Spruance until November, when she will report to the U.S. Navy Surface Warfare School in Newport, R.I.

Hruska, meanwhile, has been helping out at Nellis Air Force Base's Red Flag Exercise headquarters since graduating from Princeton University last spring and getting her commission as a second lieutenant.

She will report to pilot training in August, joining students from up to nine other nations in the U.S.-based, NATO sponsored, flight training. Air Force officials state that new lieutenants in training "may have a Belgian flight instructor, a Dutch flight commander, a Greek section commander and a German squadron commander" in the multinational program. English is the international language of aviation, they note.

In brief

They include Christopher Hedum at Fort Sill, Okla., the son of Laurie Hedum of Las Vegas and a 2000 graduate of Horizon East High School; Josephine Calulot at Fort Jackson, S.C., the daughter of Trinidad Calulot Jr. of Las Vegas and a 2000 UNLV graduate; and Michael Manus Jr. at Fort Knox, Ky., the son of Terri Gonzales and Michael Manus, both of Las Vegas and a 2000 graduate of Cimarron Memorial High School.

Also completing boot camp were Scott Mathewson at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., the son of Paul Mathewson of Las Vegas and a 1998 graduate of Eldorado High School; and Aaron Hardy also at Fort Leonard Wood, the son of Merlin and Paula Hardy of Las Vegas and 2000 graduate of Las Vegas High School.

The new soldiers received instruction in drill and ceremonies, weapons, map reading, tactics, military courtesy, military justice, physical fitness, first aid, and Army history.