The words “You've Got Mail” never looked so good as they did Sunday night, flashing on the computer screen at the Bredestege home in North Bend.

        For J.T. and Cheryl Bredestege — and for their daughter-in-law, Cara, seven months pregnant — it meant the end of weeks of worry and waiting about their son and husband, Petty Officer Andrew Bredestege, who is serving on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in the Arabian Sea.

Bredestege

        “They're coming home,” the 22-year-old sailor's mother said. “Our prayers are answered.”

        The Bredesteges — along with hundreds of other families of Enterprise crew members around the country — received an e-mail from James A.
Winnefeld Jr., captain of the Enterprise, saying the aircraft carrier had cleared the Suez Canal and would be back in its home port of Norfolk, Va. within weeks. The crew was deeply engaged in the air strikes over Afghanistan.

        “We look forward to seeing you soon,” the captain wrote to the family members back home. “Be careful with your kids on Halloween.”

        And, to add to the sense of relief the families are feeling, Capt. Winnefeld said that the restrictions on e-mails and “Sailorphones” have been lifted. The phones are radio phones used by crewmen to communicate with folks back home. Mrs. Bredestege said the e-mails from her son have started to trickle in; her daughter-in-law, who lives with her parents in Cheviot and is due to deliver the couple's first child in late December, received one Sunday night.

        Wednesday, the sailor's wife and mother spent the afternoon boxing up Andrew's things to take to Norfolk.

        “We're going, of course, we wouldn't miss it,” Cheryl Bredestege said. “I want to be there when it comes in.”

        The family is renting a time-share condo in nearby Williamsburg and plans to spend several days visiting. Andrew's mother said she hopes her son will be able to come back to Cincinnati for a few days before he is due to report to a Navy training school in San Diego in late November.

        The Navy has some “welcome home” activities planned for the Bredesteges and the other families in Norfolk, including a party the night before the Enterprise pulls into the harbor.

        And, in December, they will be invited back to Norfolk for an Enterprise Christmas party.

        “Trust me,” Capt. Winnefeld wrote, “you won't want to miss this event, which will be a dirt-cheap way to have fun.”

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