Page 11 - Hawaii Island MidWeek - Oct 20, 2021

OCTOBER 20, 2021
HAWAI‘I ISLAND MIDWEEK 11
For Lewis, There’s No Place Like Home In The Islands
FROM PAGE 7
asked to deploy in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and take command of the Gulf Re- gion Division District. There in the western Asian theater, she was asked to provide en- gineering and construction management in Baghdad and Al Anbar Province.
I’ ve done in my career. We had a $2.1 billion construc- tion program. We built every- thing from fire stations and treatment plants, to power stations, court houses, roads and schools,” explains Lewis. “You name it, we were build- ing it in trying to give the peo- ple of Iraq infrastructure.”
which Adams rode his bicy- cle over 18,000 miles, criss- crossing every state while saluting veterans, active duty personnel and their families as his wife followed him in a rented RV.
Despite the constant bomb- ings all around, the hijacking of many of her crew’s sup- plies and the heavy loss of life (including many of her own Iraqi contractors), the experience was incredibly rewarding, she notes.
L
classmate whom she wouldn’t meet until 17 years after they graduated) moved to the Big Island in 2011. Their arrival marked the culmination of the couple’s yearlong “Duty, Honor, America Tour,” in
After touching down in the islands, the equally tough Ad- ams biked the remaining 222 miles on the last day of the tour and, along with Lewis, decided the 50th State would be where they’ d plant their roots.
ewis and husband Douglass Adams (also a West Point
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“My time there allowed me to do the most phenom- enal engineering work that
For Lewis, Hawai‘i has been “the longest I’ ve lived anywhere in one place in my life.”
“It was fate,” concludes the woman who earlier in her career was briefly sta- tioned at Schofield Bar- racks and Fort Shafter on O‘ahu. “Along the way as we crossed the entire coun- try, we kept asking ourselves where the ideal place to live would be. I can only say that it felt like coming home when we got to the islands. They really spoke to us, es- pecially the Hilo side of the Big Island.
While Debra Lewis followed in an RV, husband Douglass Adams traversed the entire continental U.S. in 2011 before completing the couple’s yearlong “Duty, Honor, America Tour,” on the Big Island. That’s where the couple ultimately settled. PHOTO COURTESY DEBRA LEWIS
“With all the hardships and things we’ ve experienced in our lives, it was the place to come and be welcomed. I think it was meant for us.”