Airman becomes father to triplets while deployed

by Airman 1st Class Sam Fogleman
92nd Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs

7/23/2013 - SPOKANE, Wash. -- Deploying can be a disorienting experience in and of itself.

Senior Airman Harley Wicks, 19th Logistics Readiness Squadron Air Transportation at Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., left for Afghanistan the day after Christmas last year knowing he was about to be the father of triplets.

Wick's wife, Amber, became essentially a single parent and a new mother of three when Owen, Keegan and Rylee-Jo were born April 28. Harley returned back to the United States to meet Amber and his new children July 15. (Their reunion at Spokane International Airport made the news at a variety of outlets.)

"We found out at the six-week ultrasound that we were having three," Amber said. "We knew he was going to be deploying. As soon as we found out there were three, I started making plans to be with my parents while Harley was gone."

The triplets are Harley and Amber's first children together.

"They are our first and only," Amber said with a touch of certainty.

Amber, a Washington state native, stayed with her parents in Oakesdale, Wash., for much of the time Harley was gone.

The Wicks family will begin their trip from Washington state to their new home in Arkansas July 26.

"He was there that first night, and he looked at me with the sleepiest eyes, with a baby on his chest, and he said, "I had no idea how you did this,'" Amber recollected of Harley's first night home with his triplets. "He also said, 'I've been with them for one day and I'm exhausted.'"