TEXAS \u2014 Several ships and more than 1,000 service members have arrived at the Port of Houston for the inaugural Fleet Week Houston, which runs from April 15-22. This is the first time a Texas city is hosting the event, and this year, it\u2019s part of America\u2019s 250th\u00a0birthday celebration.<\/p>\n
Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen were welcomed by cheering Houston team mascots as they exited the U.S.S.\u00a0Kearsarge, one of several ships arriving for the week-long event that will be open for public tours.<\/p>\n
U.S. Navy Engineman Third Class Marian Garcia, who grew up near Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport, was traveling aboard the vessel for training.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love coming back home. It\u2019s been some time,\u201d Garcia said.<\/p>\n
Quartermaster First Class Payton Sanchez, who was also aboard, is from Sugar Land.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting that nice, Texas air when I\u2019ve been away from Texas a good amount of years. I was stationed in Japan at first, now being back, I missed it. I got goose bumps just coming back, raising up that flag. It was amazing,\u201d Sanchez said.<\/p>\n
The service members attended an opening ceremony outside Houston City Hall late Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe partnership between Houston and our Armed Forces has never been stronger,\u201d said Houston Mayor John Whitmire, also highlighting Houston\u2019s partnership with the Navy through the port, refineries and NASA. \u201cWe want to expose the Sailors and Marines to our diverse communities, and we\u2019re going to push them out of the comfort zone of downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crews will travel around the city, greet the public and attend several events, ceremonies, exhibitions and concerts, all while catching up with family members who traveled from near and far to see them. The connections holds special meaning for Houston neighbors who came out on opening day to support servicemembers.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ve got uncles who were in World War II, some were POWs, cousins in the Navy,\u201d said Cynthia Ashburn, a Houston resident.<\/p>\n
Diksha Krishna, another Houstonian, reflected on the military members who are serving during the turmoil in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
“In a time with so much uncertainty, it\u2019s a great opportunity to show them that they\u2019re loved back at home,\u201d Krishna said.<\/p>\n
Those who serve are welcoming the love with open arms.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been great, the warm welcome we\u2019ve had from the city so far, and I personally just love Houston,\u201d said U.S. Navy 1st Lt. Brian Karg. \u201cWe\u2019re looking forward to a great time this week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 Several ships and more than 1,000 service members have arrived at the Port of Houston for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3564,132,3565,1570,102,138,56,58,57,2672,223,82,27,1569,15717,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-256605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-app-community","9":"tag-austin","10":"tag-community-news","11":"tag-ctv","12":"tag-dallas","13":"tag-el-paso","14":"tag-houston","15":"tag-houston-headlines","16":"tag-houston-news","17":"tag-military","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-san-antonio","20":"tag-texas","21":"tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","22":"tag-valencia-jones","23":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}