Lieutenant Mamay Is Back at Home
Even though dark had already fallen Friday, Army Reserve First Lt. Elizabeth Mamay, just back from Afghanistan, thought she was on her way to see the beach she had missed so much during her nine-month deployment. East Hampton police cars and fire engines intercepted her, however, as she drove into Wainscott, with a full complement of lights and sirens to escort her home. When the caravan reached the fork at Hook Mill in the village, she was greeted by a large group of family, friends, and well-wishers, there to welcome her back.
“In moments like this, I’m definitely very lucky to be from a town that cares so deeply about its roots and its people,” said Lt. Mamay. She had had no idea of what had been planned in her honor, though she admitted her family was never one to be low-key. “My mom said, ‘See! Here’s your hero’s welcome!’ It was just very kind. You don’t expect any of that.”
Lt. Mamay, who grew up in Springs and graduated from East Hampton High School in 2008, spent the last nine months in Bagram, Afghanistan, working as a plans officer. Her responsibilities included planning base closures, managing units within the battalion, and ensuring the troops had proper training before deployment. A member of the 389th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion from Fort Totten in Queens, under the 77th Sustainment Brigade at Fort Dix, N.J., she arrived in New York on Friday morning after flying back to Fort Hood in Gatesville, Tex., on Nov. 4. Her family, including her father, Richard Mamay, a sergeant with the East Hampton Village police, and her mother, Diane McNally, the clerk of the East Hampton Town Trustees, cheered her arrival during a ceremony at Fort Totten Friday afternoon.
The 25-year-old said she was glad to be home, describing the transition as “overwhelming.”
“Not overwhelming in a bad sense. You’re over there, you live with far less than we do here,” she said. During a trip to CVS’s pharmacy on Tuesday, she said she was struck by all the options. “In Afghanistan, you get what you get, you use what you have.”
The “little things” in life, she said, are what she missed most. Not having to wear rubber shoes to shower, for one. “It seems so little, but feeling your feet on the shower tub floor — and privacy. For months, you’re always with a battle buddy.” Drinking from a cup and using silverware is also a welcome change. “For months, drinking out of cartons or cans or bottles, and now being able to go to the fridge and pour a glass of milk and having ice-cold milk was so cool,” she said with a laugh, “Things we take for granted every day.”
This was the lieutenant’s first deployment, after a little over three years in the Reserves. She was commissioned in 2012 upon her graduation from the University of Rhode Island with a degree in psychology and early education.
She had joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps program at the university at the suggestion of her mother. “I thought she was absolutely crazy. In high school, I was a total girly-girl. I used to do pageants,” she said. “She was the one who saw some leadership skills in me. . . . It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
She has learned interpersonal and communications skills, as well as how to adapt in any situation, and gained self-confidence, all which she hopes will help her in a civilian job.
Lieutenant Mamay wants to remain in the Army Reserve and to relocate to Virginia, where she lived briefly before being deploying, and to get a job with the federal government or in the private sector as a logistical specialist or in supply management. For now, though, she plans to enjoy the holidays in East Hampton. She’s been kept busy so far, helping her mother at the trustees’ Largest Clam Contest on Sunday and seeing friends.
She did finally make it to the ocean. “The next day, when it was light outside, we went and got egg sandwiches and sat at the beach” — a perfect end to the welcome-home celebration, she said.