Chief petty officer returns after 20 years

Twenty years ago, Anthony Fluke promised his parents and grandparents he would return from the Navy safe and sound. He would march up the driveway in his chief’s uniform, he told them.

Through the years Fluke achieved the rank of chief petty officer. He has traveled the around the world, working closely with Navy SEAL teams and the U.S. Marine Corps in his capacity as an engineman.

When his grandfather William Krause, a World War II Navy veteran who had been a mentor to him, passed away in 2000, Fluke wasn’t able to come home for the funeral. He was deployed overseas. Duty called. He came home for little more than a day when his mother died in 2005.

Fluke made good on his longstanding promise, though, on Monday, as he stopped by Brendan House in Kalispell for a surprise reunion with his 88-year-old grandmother, Carroll Krause. It was a heart-felt embrace as the staff at Brendan House gathered for the homecoming.

Fluke’s father and Krause’s son, Greg Cook, orchestrated the reunion. Instead of walking down the driveway, Fluke walked down the hallway at Brendan House.

“I never expected this,” Carroll said as she wiped away tears. “I’m completely overwhelmed. He’s a fine young man and he has served his country well.”

Fluke has kept in touch by phone with his grandmother through the years, but except for one brief visit has not been able to spend time with his grandmother in 20 years.

Fluke plans to retire from the Navy in October to spend more time with his two children. It will be an adjustment, he admits, because the Navy has been his life.

He tried to enlist in the Army when he was just 16, to follow in his father’s footsteps, but wasn’t too far into the process when the military told him he was too young.

After working in construction for a time and getting into “too many fights,” Fluke was determined to head down a more productive path and enlisted in the Navy in May 1997, unbeknownst to his family. It was the last time he was in Kalispell.

“I didn’t tell my dad I had joined the Navy,” Fluke said. “After he found out I was in boot camp, that’s when I promised I’d walk down the driveway in my dress uniform when I came home.

“It’s a promise kept. It took 20 years,” he said. “It’s an emotional moment, surreal.”

Fluke moved to the Flathead Valley with his family in the late 1980s after spending his early years in the Frenchtown area. He was destined to become an engineman — a “gear head” — from the get-go. He was taking apart and reassembling lawnmowers by the time he was 5, and would have tackled his dad’s Harley Davidson bike, too, if his father hadn’t put the kibosh on it.

The USS Port Royal was Fluke’s first assignment; then he headed to Norfolk, Virginia, to report for duty aboard the USS Deyo, a destroyer. In 2002 he was assigned to Ships Intermediate Maintenance Activity to rebuild engines. He completed deployments to the Mideast and North Atlantic.

After that he joined the special warfare combat craft division and worked closely with Navy SEAL teams.

“We’re transport and 911 when the SEALS are in the water,” he explained. “When I was in that unit we went everywhere. I’ve been around the world twice … I was always gone.”

The next step in Fluke’s career was joining Assault Craft Unit TWO, a prepositioning force that allowed him to work closely with the Marines.

Fluke has been in the thick of things many times over the past 20 years. When the USS Cole was bombed in a 2000 terrorist attack, “we set up the emergency perimeter,” he recalled.

Being part of anti-piracy operations in Africa was dicey work, too.

“Pretty much any incident in the Middle East or the Gulf, I’ve been in the area,” he said.

He made a point early on, though, to practice humility, something his grandfather and father instilled in him.

“It’s not about you,” he said. “It’s about training and preparing those who will become” the next chief petty officers.

Now it’s time for Fluke to focus on the next generation — his son, Lane, 14, and daughter Cheyenne, 12. He’s now a single dad and doesn’t want to miss any more of his children’s lives.

“We’ve sacrificed so I could serve my country. The first nine years of my son’s life I was a ghost,” he said. “It’s time to start a new chapter.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.