MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT SAN DIEGO -- Marine families can be hard pressed to spend time together, even during summer months. Semper Fit is attempting to provide activities for Marine families this summer. Movie Night on the Bay was held at the Bay View boat house Saturday night.
Kelly Sitar, deputy director of Semper Fit here, in charge of family events was there to set up a concession stand before the movie started. The movie was Avatar.
Sitar said the Movie Night on the Bay was one of three planned events for the summer directed toward families spending time together. The first event was a family bingo night that has already been held, Movie Night on the Bay was the second event and the third event is planned as another Movie Night on the Bay August 28. Sitar’s 7 year-old son, Shane, bounced around as he watched the crew set up to screen, exclaiming the he was excited to see the movie.
Brent Poser, director of Semper Fit here, said this was one of the things Semper Fit intend on doing to encourage family time.
Senior drill instructor Sgt. Hector Sanchez, Company L, 3rd Battalion, said he was just glad to be spending time with his family.
“I didn’t know about it until recently,” Sanchez said. “I was looking up the boat house times online and saw that this was going on and thought it would be a cool thing to do.”
However, it wasn’t just families that ment to the event. A group of 15 injured recruits also got to see the movie. Capt. Timmothy Garrison, executive officer of the Recruit Separation Platoon, said he had them come to boast their morale and he was more excited for the recruits then himself, although he, like the recruits, had never seen Avatar before. Garrison even bought the recruits popcorn for the event.
When the movie started, families and couples were scattered across the boat house lawn, some with glow necklaces and bracelets sold by MCCS, others with popcorn for the concession stand. Even after the movie started, stragglers trickled onto the lawn to watch.
Sitar and Poser each said they hoped for the success of this event and the next one scheduled for August.
Poser said Semper Fit’s intent was to help put together more events oriented towards the family. He later said that he felt Movie Night on the Bay was a fairly good success because the set up was great and around 70 people showed up even though he was hoping for more and it was probably because it was the first time they had done anything like this.
Shane Sitar said that part of the reason he was excited was because he got to see his dad. Events like this can be good opportunities for Marines and other base personal to spend time with their families.