The Perfect Gift

POLSON — If you’re contemplating the perfect wedding gift, you might want to take note of Eileen and Dave Evertz’s wedding.

When planning their ceremony, the couple wanted all their kids to be involved in their Aug. 20 wedding. Eileen, who has three boys, and Dave, who has a boy and two girls, were making a new family and wanted to symbolize it.

“When we were working vows, I remembered a wedding that I had been to that incorporated the kids into the ceremony because they were blending a family,” Eileen said. “I just thought it would be great because we aren’t just two people becoming one, but two families becoming one.”

However, there was a slight problem. Eileen’s oldest son, Traven, is currently serving in the U.S. Army and had shipped out at the end of 2010 to serve in Afghanistan.

“I wanted my oldest son to be at the wedding more than anything,” Eileen said. “We planned it for August because my mom has cancer and we wanted her to be here before she got too sick. I had to choose between my son and my mom which was a tough decision. Traven told me to choose my mom and he was fine with it.”

But Traven was still able to make it to the wedding — thanks to modern technology. Before the wedding, with the hustle and bustle of the ceremony set-up, a chair was placed in the front row, held at the family residence overlooking Flathead Lake. On that chair was a laptop, and across the cyber universe was Traven — hooked in via Skype.

“Both Dave and I were brainstorming on how we could have Traven at the wedding,” Eileen said. “We had Skyped with him when he was in Atlanta and in Louisiana, but it had failed so many times in Afghanistan.”

Eileen added that when they do talk to Traven, it’s usually by other means of communication due to their reliability.

“We don’t use Skype often because the connection on his end is really slow,” Eileen said. “So we mostly talk on Facebook or the cell phones. We decided to give it a try and see what happened. It worked and so we planned on Skypeing and if that failed, he would have called us and been on speaker phone.”

For some reason though, the Skype connection worked on the wedding day, which featured a ceremony of the bride and groom, kids at their side.

“God truly wanted him to be there with us that day,” Eileen said. “I can’t explain why it worked so well. Maybe because it was 1 a.m. there and no one else was on the computers.”

Nine months into his deployment, Traven was awake in the early morning in Afghanistan, thousands of miles away, but in a sense, he was home again.

“Being able to watch it on Skype was great, I finally had a chance to feel closer to home,” Traven said. “It was a huge morale boost, especially since during the summer months over here a lot of fighting picks up.”

Deployed in the Wardak providence of Afghanistan in the Juarez Valley, Traven is part of the U.S. effort to keep insurgents from destabilizing the country.

“During the winter months most insurgents head south into Pakistan, so nothing really too hectic happens then,” Traven said. “During late spring they start heading back into the country and re-establish their cells in the areas, and that’s when the fighting season starts. An average day usually has us manning guard towers or running patrols in our area.”

For a moment though, Traven was able to get away from the fighting and be a part of a special event in his mother and family’s life.

“He was so tired but he knew that we wanted him to be part of our day,” Eileen said. “So he stayed up all night and waited to call. I was so excited when he got through. I just wanted him to be with us so badly. I can’t even tell you how proud I am of Traven. He is an amazing kid and to see his face and hear his voice on our wedding day was priceless.”

“To have all six of our kids together sharing our special day was the best gift that I could have asked for.”