Cape graduate returns after deployment

Lt. Samuel Fletcher, a 1999 Cape Girardeau Central High School graduate, recently returned from a seven-month deployment in the Persian Gulf aboard the USS Harry S. Truman, a U.S. Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Fletcher flew combat missions over Iraq as a flight officer in an F-18 Superhornet. He is a 2003 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. He obtained a master's degree in international relations from the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. Fletcher joined about 5,000 shipmates at a Norfolk Naval station homecoming where his mother and sister greeted him. His father sailed with him from Jacksonville, Fla., to Virginia. Fletcher now serves with his squadrom, VFA-32, at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach.

— From staff reports