Introducing Myself (Deb Hunt-Petty)

I am one of the co-hosts for our new Blogtalkradio show called "Real Widows...". My name is Deb..yes just Deb. No that is not my given name Deborah is but for as long as I can remember Ive insisted on being called Deb.  I am the mother of two amazing little boys. Oliver is 7 and brings me so much light and love into my life. Owen is 4 and makes me smile and laugh everyday. We live in FL...for now.  I am also the CEO of our household and not sure I like having that title fulltime. I married the man of my dreams, my best friend and the biggest pain in my butt too. I followed him around the US, as he served proudly in the US Army. But Ill get into that later. I graduated in 1996 from my hometown college Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia...no that is not "western Virginia", with an English degree and minor in Art. I worked for several years in a medical office doing office management. I did other jobs within the medical field as we traveled and moved around, Ft. Bragg, NC, then Ft. Sill, OK and ending up at FT. Hood, TX.  I feel like my "real" story begins when we moved to Ft. Hood, TX so that is where I will focus this introduction mainly on that time.

In 2001 Chris,oh he would be the love of my life...best friend....pain in the butt..blah blah blah... I mentioned briefly above; moved to Ft. Hood, Texas. Chris was finishing the CCC (Captains Career Course) and was in Kansas. I went south as he made his way north. We had just bought our first home together and for the first time felt "grown up". We were excited and it was my duty to get us settled in and ready for him when he finally came home.  Two weeks after I moved into our home, painting, unpacking and getting settled the worst thing on American soil happened, September 11th. Chris was 99% sure this meant we would go to war. He was right, just not right away!  We loved it there and made a home and wonderful friends too.  Life was good.


November 2, 2002 we were so happy to welcome our first born son Oliver into our lives. Chris was beside himself and talk about the "Daddy glow" that man had it two fold. The next three months were wonderful, we were a family and I was just in love with my little family. THEN...we got the news, Chris would deploy to Iraq in March. Oliver was 4 months old and we were saying "Goodbye" to Chris for a year. I took on the role of CEO at that point and although hated parts of it, did it with pride for my husband, after all he was getting his butt shot at, I just had to pay bills!  The year past and it was time for Chris to redeploy home and I was so excited!  We now had a 16 month old who was walking and talking, what a SHOCK that would be to Chris. The next few months, as Im sure you well know were not easy but we worked through it and found that we were so happy to be a little family again.


Chris took his first Command shortly after that during the summer of 2004. That meant long hours and long days for me. I had already been alone for a yr and now here I wa again...alone playing CEO. But once again I did it happily.  We decided we wanted to try for a second little monkey and with some "luck" in February of 2005 I found out I was pregnant. It was not that simple however, as I was now high risk and no one could tell me why exactly. I went into labor more times than anyone should, I was hospitalized 3 times and was so over being pregnant....


Apparently Owen was so done baking,  and 2 months prior to his due date Owen was born, October 17, 2005. There were no complications with him at all but I was a different story, I WONT bore you with that however! Anyway Oliver was a very proud big brother and Chris was once again the proud Daddy! We had just a few weeks before Chris was to deploy to Iraq for the second time. And our last holiday together was Thanksgiving. Two days later we were saying our goodbye.


40 days into the second depoyment, Chris was instantly killed by a remote detonated IED (Improvised Explosive Device). Chris was killed along with 4 others in his battery.


This is the point that my life as I knew it at that moment in time ended and this new morphed version of myself began.  But that is for later posts. I will share that day, and the days to follow..so for now that is me Deb...Just Deb in a nutshell!