(CNN) -- One day before the unofficial "Star Wars" holiday in May, an R2-D2 replica wheeled through the front door of the Smiley family home in Bangor, Maine, to the delight of the three young "Star Wars" fans in the house.

"May the fourth be with you!" exclaimed 5-year-old Lindell Smiley, decked out in full Luke Skywalker gear. In a house filled with excited shouts, it wasn't apparent that a very important person was missing from the packed dinner table. But R2-D2 had a special surprise. The robot projected a video of deployed Navy pilot Dustin Smiley, father to Ford, Owen, and Lindell. His sons were shocked into momentary silence as they watched. In the video, Dustin Smiley told his family that he loved them and implored his boys to congratulate their mother on her graduation from a master's program at the University of Maine.

Welcome to "Dinner with the Smileys." Sarah Smiley is a Navy wife, syndicated columnist and author. She has already made it through two of her husband's deployments, first in 2001 and again in 2003. His current 13-month stint overseas, which began in November, is his longest yet.

By the late ’90s, spam had migrated from Internet chat rooms to in-boxes as a term of art for junk e-mail, becoming synonymous with erectile dysfunction ads and entreaties from fake Nigerian princes, and presenting Hormel with the greatest marketing challenge in its 75-year history. “We had something negative that was trading on our brand equity, on our name,” says Dan Goldman, Hormel’s grocery products manager. “You have to protect what’s yours.”

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