Groton, Conn. ?
Timothy Dougherty was happy to get an iPod from his employer Tuesday morning, but the best thing about returning from Iraq was interacting with his 7-month-old daughter, Avalia, for the first time.
?It was a little strange at first, but now she really knows me,? said Dougherty, of Montville, who is part of the Army?s B Company 411th Civil Affairs Battalion. ?It?s great to be home and great to have an employer that values the military as highly as this one does.?
That employer is Electric Boat Corp. EB held a breakfast ceremony at its Groton shipyard honoring Dougherty and six others. Among the executives present were President John Casey and Vice President of Human Resources Robert Nardone.
EB employs 2,154 military veterans. The number of active-duty personnel wasn?t immediately available.
?We do what we can to support them,? Casey said during the 10th-floor conference room event. ?We want them to know how much we appreciate what they do not just for our company but our country.?
A 1999 New London High School graduate, Dougherty works as a security guard at EB. He is an Army team sergeant who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2007-08, during the surge ordered by President George W. Bush and 10 months last year. Dougherty described his latest assignment as helping to keep mayors and other minor civil servants ?in line.?
?It?s changed a lot,? he said of Iraq. ?Mostly for the better.?
Douglas Wiswell, of Groton, a member of the U.S. Army Reserves, completed a two-month electricity line training assignment at a Texas Air Force base in March 2011. An Ohio native and electrical engineer hired by EB in 2010, Wiswell said he?s grateful for his company?s appreciation.
?This was a great honor and a great surprise,? he said of the breakfast. ?It?s an excellent place to work.?
Wiswell joined the reserves in June 2003 and was deployed to Iraq and Kuwait from November 2004 to December 2005.
Dougherty and Wiswell don?t rule out future military assignments. Dougherty described Afghanistan and Africa as ?hot spots.? Wiswell?s Rhode Island-based reserve unit is attached to an active duty battalion, something he described as unusual, which raises the likelihood he would be sent to a battle theater.
?It?s a neat unit, a lot of fun,? he said.
Also honored Tuesday were Benjamin Dixon, a staff sergeant in the Maine Air National Guard and mechanical engineer at EB; James Flyntz, an Army major and structural design supervisor at EB; Joseph Giancaspro, a Rhode Island National Guard specialist and an engineer in EB?s reactor plant planning yard department; Jeremy Hart, an Air National Guard technical sergeant who is a nuclear trade training instructor at EB; and Jayson Keys, an Army Reserve second lieutenant and engineer in EB?s Subsafe Group.
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