SAILOR WELCOMED HOME NAVY MAN RETURNS FROM IRAQ WAR.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Sailor Brent Sforzini had half-expected to come home to anti-war protests.

Instead he was greeted by hundreds of yellow ribbons on trees and homes in his old neighborhood and flag-waving children at the local elementary school.

``It was a real pleasure to see - I still get choked up - all the flags, the yellow ribbons, all the children like you,'' Sforzini, 24, a petty officer second class and fire controlman on a guided missile cruiser, told cheering youngsters at Lincoln Elementary School.

Sforzini's homecoming followed almost nine months at sea on the USS Shiloh, which returned home last week to San Diego after one of the longest deployments since the Vietnam War.

Sforzini, a 1996 Quartz Hill High School graduate, had special connections with Lincoln Elementary School.

For the last month, fifth-graders had been seeing e-mailed photographs of him and his ship - Sforzini and crew mates eating on the Shiloh's deck, returning from boarding a suspected smuggling ship, in swim trunks for a dip in the Persian Gulf.

The photos were shared by his mother, Mary Sforzini, who lives across the street from teacher M.J. Montagut. Another teacher had gone to school with him.

Before the sailor's homecoming, his mother distributed fliers on doorsteps around the neighborhood, asking people to put up yellow ribbons. She estimates 300 families did.

Because yellow ribbons ran scarce in local stores, some bought yellow plastic tablecloths and cut them into strips.

``It's amazing. The neighborhood really responded,'' Montagut said.

Of her son's reaction to driving up to his old home and seeing hundreds of yellow ribbons lining the streets, Mary Sforzini said: ``He was overwhelmed. ... He had been afraid he'd be coming home to another Vietnam (protest). They kept hearing about the anti-war protests.''

Protests had occurred in Australia, where the Shiloh had docked before the fighting started, Sforzini said.

``Australia is a real Green Peace culture,'' he said. ``It looked like there was going to be a lot of protests, another Vietnam almost. After the war started, it all went away.''

At the elementary school welcome-home rally Friday, teacher Keith Meyer explained Sforzini's role in the Iraqi fighting like this: ``He was part of the team who risked their lives to bring freedom to people who did not have it.''

After being serenaded with ``This Land is Your Land,'' ``Grand Old Flag'' and ``My Country 'Tis of Thee,'' Sforzini visited with some of the children in their classrooms.

They asked him whether he had killed anybody, if he was wounded, if he ever saw Saddam Hussein, how the ship's food was, how much sleep he got, did his ship ever hit a whale, and whether he saw any sharks.

His answers: ``No, no, no, good, not enough, once by accident and lots.''

Before the fighting started, the Shiloh had been stationed in the Persian Gulf to halt ships smuggling out oil in defiance of United Nations sanctions.

Sforzini was among the boarding party that searched suspected smuggling ships. The work could be dangerous, he said. He told the youngsters he knew a sailor from another ship who was killed, with a second sailor, when a seaman on a boarded ship set off an explosive to scuttle it.

The Shiloh's biggest catch was a ship smuggling 700 metric tons of oil.

Among the photos the Lincoln pupils had been sent was one of Sforzini, toting a shotgun, on a ship deck with the rest of the boarding party.

``There were 35 crew members and there were only four of us to watch them. I elected to choose the biggest gun,'' Sforzini explained.

After the war started, the Shiloh fired 35 Tomahawk cruise missiles at targets in Iraq, Sforzini said.

``I hope it was all military casualties,'' Sforzini said.

He had joined the Navy while he was in college but not sure of what he wanted to do in life. He and a friend visited a recruiting office. The friend joined the Air Force, and Sforzini joined the Navy.

``The schooling is the best and I wanted to see the world,'' he said.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color in AV edition only) Navy sailor Brent Sforzini of Lancaster speaks to Lincoln Elementary students at a welcome-home ceremony for him Friday.

(2 -- color in AV edition only) Lincoln Elementary schoolchildren wave U.S. flags Friday as they sing ``Grand Old Flag.''

(3) Petty Officer 2nd Class Brent Sforzini explains the ribbons on his uniform to children in Mary Montagut's fifth-grade class.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer