No land in sight. Twelve, sometimes eighteen hour-long days. Launch planes. Keep the engines running. Sweep. Swab. Get qualified. Eat what you can. Sleep when you can, where you can. Try to find time to work out...

And tomorrow? You get to do it all over again.

The life of a deployed Sailor is an adventure, but it can often times be anything but fun. Luckily, the Sailors aboard USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) have someone looking out for them. And even though she's a civilian, she's a shipmate whose whole job revolves around fun.

Molly Wrona, with her sparkling personality, has been Truman's Fun Boss for the last year and a half, and her charge, as the organization implies, has always been the morale, welfare and recreation of her crew.

"Our mission is to provide well-rounded and morale-boosting activities for all Sailors assigned to Truman," said Wrona. "Whether it's as simple as a movie rental to something as big as a steel-beach picnic, our goal is to provide Sailors an outlet to relax and have fun while also completing the mission."

Truman is Wrona's first ship and her first tour as Fun Boss. She says that so far it's been...well, FUN.

"I like the travel," said Wrona. "I know we've only been to one port, but it's exciting to be able to see new things and set up fun tours and events for the crew while we're in port."

Wrona and her team of MWR "funderlings" host a variety of events for the crew, including nightly gatherings and helping prepare for a wide-variety of tours when the ship visits a foreign port.

"[My team] is in charge of putting everything out to the crew," she said. "We will set everything up and they will go out and sell tours...put it out to their friends and basically get the word out about what we're doing."

Truman's MWR office is made up of about a dozen Sailors from Truman and the embarked strike group staff, making it a diverse, effective team dedicated to assisting Fun Boss and improving the crew's overall well-being.

"The most-challenging part is spacing out all of the activities," said Aviation Machinist's Mate 3rd Class Ryan Baron, an MWR Team member for the last three months. "She's got a lot of activities planned, so getting it all out there so everyone can see [what she's got planned] is a challenge."

But the best part, according to this Striker Fighter Squadron (VFA) 81 Sailor, is getting to meet all the people - and with a crew of approximately 5,500, that can be quite a feat.

"It's great to let them have their downtime and let them hang out and have fun," said Baron. "[Fun Boss's] sense of humor is definitely a good one! She likes to have a good attitude about everything...she really likes to take the Fun Boss name seriously and make sure everyone is always kind of upbeat and has fun on this deployment."

In Wrona's experience, being a Fun Boss is a worthwhile endeavor. The hours spent putting together events for the crew - and the sometimes herculean effort that goes into that planning - yields personal rewards. And that is something Wrona loves.

"My favorite memory aboard Truman is probably the last holiday party," said Wrona. "It was my first, as I like to say, 'big girl' event and it went off without a hitch. Everyone had a good time. I got more good comments than bad," she said with a smile.

But tours and holiday parties are services that only happen occasionally. Truman's MWR has a variety of other functions that they offer for the crew; for both groups to enjoy with friends or Sailors who maybe want to do something by themselves.

"We offer video game and DVD check-out, [recreation] gear, board games and all of that," said Wrona. "And a lot of the people I talk to I'll tell them 'hey, if you come to our ticket window you can rent DVDs,' and they'll be like 'I didn't even know you offered that!'"

Some of MWR's most popular events include board game night, paint and sip (sodas or other non-alcoholic beverage offered, sorry), video game tournaments, and bingo; but Wrona and her team don't limit themselves to their own ideas. They're always on the lookout for suggestions on what the crew is looking for or activities that they would like to see happen around the ship.

"We have a 'suggestion list' at the [ticket] window," said Wrona. "We also take any e-mails or if anyone just stops by with a suggestion. We also have our MWR committee, which is made of representatives from each department, or we'd like to have a representative from each department and squadron, that way if any of their divisions have ideas they can bring them to the committee!"

Truman is currently deployed as part of an ongoing rotation of U.S. forces supporting maritime security operations in U.S. 6th Fleet Area of Operations.


For more information about Truman, visit www.facebook.com/USSTruman or www.navy.mil/local/cvn75/.

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