Salisbury Mayor Susan Kluttz, who learned how to be a Navy wife 30 years ago during the Vietnam War, is learning how to be a Navy mother now.
Her son, William Clarence Kluttz III, was headed home with his plane Sept. 10, the day before the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In the middle of the night following the attack, she heard a television report that the USS Enterprise, the aircraft carrier on which he is based, had been ordered to turn around and go back — indefinitely.
He’s the first local serviceman reported in the area.
The mayor had spent all day Tuesday with official visitors from the National League of Cities. Salisbury won the James Howland Award presented in Boston in December for the revitalization of the Park Avenue area, and James Howland, for whom the award was named, had commented that he’d like to see Salisbury.
He and his wife had arrived for that visit in time to go to a reception at the Waterworks on Monday night, Sept. 10, and then had breakfast at O.O. Rufty’s the next morning with the city’s partners in the Park Avenue Project.
“We had a wonderful breakfast meeting,” the mayor says, “and then we left and boarded the trolley around 9 for a tour.”
People on the tour had cell phones so they learned about the attack on the World Trade Center quickly and kept learning, she says, piece by piece, but she spent all day with the visitors and didn’t want to disrupt the visit.
Her husband, Bill, was out of town, and they had learned on Sunday or Monday before the Howland visit — and the terrorist attack — that the Enterprise was leaving the Middle East.
Their son, Bill, who flies a C-2 cargo plane from the Enterprise, has access at times to e-mail, she says, “and we have been able to communicate with him.
“And I’m just grateful that as far as I know he’s all right. He’s there doing his job, and I’m very proud of him. He says the forces over there get CNN and follow what’s happening here, and they’re very happy to see how patriotic we are and that we’re supporting their efforts. We’re very proud and have faith that everything is going to be fine.”
But there is an echo of the past in their story.
Her husband, Bill, was a lieutenant junior grade with the Navy, attached to Amphibious Group 2 in the Mediterranean during the Vietnam War.
“And Iwas left here 30 years ago this week 812 months pregnant with our first child,” she says, “and that baby is about to have his 30th birthday on Oct. 5, and now he’s there.
“We were stationed in Norfolk, and Bill brought me home so I could have my baby here before he left.
“I have said so many times that I felt so sorry for myself being left here, but any sacrifices I had to make were really overshadowed by my pride.”
Young Bill — he’s 6-foot-6 now, so she feels silly when “little Bill” still slips out — joined the Navy after three years at Hampden-Sydney College in Hampden City, Va., and served on the USS Theodore Roosevelt. When he finished his tour of duty, he went back to college and graduated from North Carolina State in communications, but he wanted to be pilot and entered Naval Aviation’s Officer Candidate School three years ago.
“This is his first tour out as a pilot.”
She went to bed Tuesday night, Sept. 11, after her official duties were done, but her husband was out of town and she couldn’t sleep, so at 2 a.m. she turned on the television.
“I was awake and needed to hear the news, and that’s when I heard the announcement that the Enterprise had been turned around to go back. Indefinitely.
“My first reaction was horror for the innocent people in the attack,” she says. “My child is in the military. This is his job. But I couldn’t help but realize that the future was this war.”
And it’s hard to remember whether or not she got any sleep at all that night.
Contact Rose Post at 704-797-4251 or rpost@salisburypost.com
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