PERRY – Bernadette Maloney and Barbara Hicks are longtime friends – for a quarter of a century, in fact.

Their sons, Benjamin Maloney and Theodore Cummings, also are longtime friends – 21 years, in fact.

On Saturday the moms and their sons were at the Perry Elementary School celebrating the safe return of Maloney and Cummings, along with three classmates.

The men have been in Iraq for the past year

Although Bernadette Maloney had much to celebrate Saturday night, she’s still worried.

Her other son, Derek, is still in Iraq and not expected home until August – if he’s not extended.

Because Maloney and Hicks have been friends for so long, it was not unreasonable that their sons would grow up best friends. The boys went to school together and even joined the Maine Army National Guard together.

The two moms met when they were in their 20s, after Maloney and her family had moved to Perry.

Their babies were born a month apart.

The Maloney family even has a picture of their son and Cummings in diapers.

It’s been a difficult year for the two mothers, beginning with when they had to say goodbye to the National Guardsmen.

“It felt like I had five sons over there,” Maloney said of the five longtime friends. “It was very hard to say goodbye to all of them.”

But she was able to cope, Maloney said. “My faith helped me a lot, day by day. You just have to get through it and get on with things and hope that things are going to work out,” she said.

Hicks said she tried not to watch the news. “The Internet communication was good,” she said. “[Ted] would go out on the road on a mission and come back and, even if he was tired, he’d have a little message on his instant messenger that he was sleeping or watching a movie. So I knew that he was home safe; that was a good part of it, the communication.”

Hicks said now that the two friends are back, they plan to attend school together.

“Both Ben Maloney and my son Ted went to the University of Maine together, and at the time that they were deployed they were both in school, and they have plans to return to school, and that all will be paid for [by the military],” she said.