Infantry wives get R

Marisa O’Neil

Getting her toes pampered and painted doesn’t generally top the to-do

list of Misty Gersley, wife of a Camp Pendleton Marine and mother to

three boys.

But on Tuesday, Gersley and a dozen other service wives snuggled

in plush, green bathrobes for pedicures, massages and facials at a

posh spa, followed by a champagne lunch. The free treatments and

bistro meal came as a welcome break from worrying about husbands

deployed overseas and caring for children whose fathers are gone for

months at a stretch.

“It’s a nice gesture,” Gersley said. “It’s something to give back

to myself. I don’t often do that.”

Most of the women who gathered at Spa Gregorie’s on Tuesday are

wives of Camp Pendleton’s 1st Battalion, 1st Marines -- the “1/1” in

military lingo. The city of Newport Beach “adopted” the unit in 2003

to send letters, care packages and to lend support to the Marines and

their families.

That led Spa Gregorie’s and Rouge Bistro and Bar to offer up a

complimentary treatment and lunch package to the military wives, said

Kathy Leek, a spa spokeswoman. The wives are the first to sample the

new “Beauty and the Bistro” package offered by the spa and the

restaurant.

Each woman got to pick one treatment before heading to the bistro

for a French-inspired lunch in the private St. Tropez room at Rouge.

Teddi Inman, whose husband, Gunnery Sgt. Anthony Inman is getting

ready to head to Iraq, chose to have her first-ever facial.

“I don’t even know what it entails,” she said.

Anne Oxner opted for a massage, something she wouldn’t splurge on

by herself.

“This is the chance of a lifetime,” she said. “I never get to do

this.”

Oxner and most of the other wives at the spa are Key Volunteer

Coordinators at Camp Pendleton. That means they help each other --

and especially the new wives, unaccustomed to military life --

through tough times.

It’s stressful for everyone, they said.

“We have to be strong for the wives who rely on us too,” Inman

said.

Oxner, married to Gunnery Sgt. Kevin Oxner, knows the drill. She

gave birth to one of their two sons six days after her husband left

for a deployment.

She, like Gersley, is expecting her husband to come home in June.

But for a few hours Tuesday, they could put their worries and

responsibilities aside and relax while others took care of them.

“I feel like a woman,” Gersley said as a pedicurist groomed her

toes. “Not just a mom.”