By Molly Lovell
Editor
     Scarborough resident Charles Summers was having dinner at Pat’s Pizza with his wife Ruth when he found out he was being recalled to active duty by the United States Navy.
     The call came on his cell phone and he had to go upstairs where the reception was better in order to hear the news from his commanding officer that he would be heading to Baghdad this summer.
     “You’re always aware that these things can happen but when your sitting down for pizza it’s not the call you expect to come across,” Summers said.
     He joined the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1996 and is a lieutenant commander attached to Naval Information Bureau 101, fifth fleet, Bahrain.
     Summers, a former state senator, is also the New England regional administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration.
     Summers will report to active duty on July 6 and will be attached to U.S. Navy Strategic Communications, Multi-National Force – Iraq. He will spend roughly 14 months overseas.
     While in Baghdad Summers will be coordinating national and middle eastern media coming to the area and said he expects the experience to be “pretty intense.”
     “I look forward to it. It will be the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced in my Navy career, but it should be quite the experience,” he said.
     This will be the second time Summers has been recalled to active duty.
     In February 2002 he spent eight months at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. serving as the deputy public affairs officer for the secretary of the Navy.
     Several members of Summers’ family have served in the military. His wife Ruth also grew up in a military family.
     Ruth is a public affairs officer in the Naval Reserves and that’s how the two met. They met at a conference while he was living in Maine and her in Texas.
     “I slowly worked my way up the east coast and when I got here, he said, ‘let’s get married,’” Ruth said. They have been married five years.
     She said that in a way, the news of her husband’s recall might be easier for her to handle because she was raised in a military family. Still, she said the news, “took the wind out of our sails.”
     Ruth said she’s incredibly proud of her husband, adding that she knows how important the Navy is to him.
     The two should be able to communicate via e-mail every day and talk on the telephone once a week.
     Ruth said this tour will be different compared to the tour Summers spent at the Pentagon.
     She said both of his kids, Tricia and Chas, were still living at home.
     “Now it’s just me, my dog, my cat and two horses,” she said.
     Ruth has a large support system of neighbors and friends she can rely on while her husband is gone.
     “I also understand that all of the appliances are going to break the week after he’s gone,” she laughed.
     She also said she’ll have a long “honey-do,” list waiting for Summers when he comes back.
     What exactly is a “honey-do,” list?
     “Honey do this, honey do that, he’s not going to come back and relax,” she laughed.
     As federal law states, Summers will return to his job after his tour in Baghdad.