JACKSONVILLE – The roar of a P-8A Poseidon aircraft’s twin jet engines greeted dozens of friends and family at a hangar on the Naval Air Station Jacksonville Sunday as the final plane from Patrol Squadron 45 returned home from a seven-and-a-half month deployment in Italy.

As the plane taxied up to the hangar, eventually coming to a halt, families rushed to the plane, roses in hand, looking through the crowd for the faces that had been on their minds for more than a half a year.

The PS-45 Pelicans, a squadron that totals 274 personnel, left NAS Jacksonville in late August for a support mission in Italy. This was the first trip for the group in the new P-8 planes, which feature jet engines, as opposed to their former transportation, the propeller-driven P-3.

“We were the first squadron to take the P-8 over there,” said Commanding Officer Ryan Lilley. “This has been my longest deployment, and a lot of things have changed since we left. My daughter has grown two-and-a-half inches. It’s good to be home.”

Working the runway was Middleburg resident Dakota Kinkton, a member of the Pelicans squadron who returned a couple weeks back and was working Sunday to flag down the incoming aircraft, helping it taxi its way to the hangar. He looked around at all the families waiting on the final P-8 to return.

“This was us two weeks ago,” Kinkton said.

Before the plane arrived, Kinkton’s son Levi, 2, tried on his helmet while his wife Morgan, who is pregnant with their second child, stood by smiling. The young family was happy to share in the joy of the families there waiting on their sailors to return home.

Among those waiting for a loved one was the Byrd family of Lake Asbury.

LaShonda Byrd sat with her daughters Tamara, 21, and Tiara, 18. The three sat anxiously in the white plastic chairs filling the hangar as plane after plane landed on the runway, none of which sported the signature pelican graphic on the tail that would signify that Master Chief Ervin Byrd was finally home.

Byrd has been deployed 11 times since the girls were young and, according to Tamara, it doesn’t get any easier. She equates his time away to about five years of her life in which he hasn’t been there.

“When I was younger it was a lot harder, before we could cry and cry and cry as we watched the plane leave,” Tamara said. “Now, it’s still hard, we still miss him in the same way, but we’ve gotten better at understanding that he has to leave. Before we would ask, ‘Why?’ But now it’s ‘Daddy’s gone, Daddy’s working.’”

As the plane finally approached, the three Byrd women burst from their seats and rushed to the edge of the tarmac cheering as the plane did a fly by, “now he’s just teasing us,” LaShonda said through laughter.

“I’m kinda’ nervous a little bit, I just haven’t seen him in so long,” LaShonda said. “I miss him so much, everything – I just miss his presence.”

The plane arrived, dropped the ramp and the Byrds watched as sailor after sailor reunited with their families, eventually, second-to-last, there was Ervin Byrd, who, though reserved, couldn’t sustain his emotions as he felt the love of his family for the first time in months.

“It’s a moment you can’t repeat, each one is a different rush of everything,” he said while hugging his family. “I got off the plane second-to-last. My priority is to get everyone else back home, then I start looking for my family.”

Instead of revisiting a favorite restaurant or favorite place in Clay County, Byrd was headed straight home to get to work on all the things that have broken while he was gone. “He’s a jack of all trades, he does it all,” LaShonda said.

“And a master of none,” Ervin joked.