Every generation in my family has had someone serve in the military dating back to the Civil War, and I am part of the first generation to not have served. Not every generation got it as right as my parents did when it comes to love and the military, so I’d like to highlight their love story this Veterans Day to show my love and support for their dedication to serving this country and raising me.
My dad was an Army reservist in high school, who went active duty hoping to find direction with his life after graduation. My mom enlisted after her first year of college left her questioning the future, but in a family with four other siblings, her parents had rules about life after high school; the choices were get a job, join the military, or go to college, and since college at the time was a bust, my mom enlisted. My dad served from 1984-1992, and my mom served from 1987-1991; they met at Fort Knox in Kentucky.
photo credits: Stephanie Roberts
The Love Story from His POV:
It started in ‘90, the unit that I was stationed in at Fort Knox was being disbanded. Some people had gotten orders to go somewhere else, different posts, but more than a handful were reassigned to the hospital on Fort Knox. There was an opening at the drug and alcohol center for a medical records person. Your mom was a counselor there, but she was also the records person. She was doing two jobs, and I was going to take over the records job she was covering; they brought her in, and we got introduced to each other. She basically told me what the job entailed, and so I took the position. I guess over time, having lunch with all of us together, you talk, you learn about people: where they’re from, how long they’ve been in, where they’ve been, where they would like to go. Your mom and her friend, another counselor, liked to go running during lunch. Well, I hated running. I really did. But for physical fitness purposes, that was one of my weaknesses. I could do the pushups and sit-ups, but I was trying to get my time down for the running. So I decided to join them. We’d eat a little lunch then go run, or we would run first and then come back and eat lunch. One day we were all sitting around the lunch table and people were talking about what their favorite dish was or what their favorite dish to cook was. Your mom said spaghetti and meatballs. That was one of her biggest things. So out of the blue I said I could cook lasagna, and I had never ever cooked lasagna in my life. I invited her over to my apartment and we talked and ate lasagna; I found out she doesn’t like mushrooms. I had put mushrooms in it, and to this day, I do not make it with mushrooms.
I think I was there probably a couple months at the Drug and Alcohol Center when they said they had an opening over at the hospital in the administrative office, and your mother was getting ready to be transferred over there herself. She was going to go to be a case manager for the mother infant unit. I took the position, and I got transferred to the hospital on base. This was the summer of ’90. My lieutenant and sergeant called me into the office one day, and I already knew I was on the promotion list, but they wanted me to work on getting some more points. The way to earn points is to go in front of a promotion board; your mother had gone to tons of these. The sergeant, not knowing that we already knew each other, wanted me to work with her to get ready for the board. As time went on and we practiced for the boards, we started hanging out more, just talking about general stuff. It wasn’t all military stuff. Told me she was from Virginia. I told her I was from New York and kind of started getting a little personal. And then in a way, I guess we started dating, if that’s what you want to call it. I mean, well, we never fully went out on a date. She usually came over to my apartment. I’m not a movie and dinner kind of guy, ya know. There were a few times she crashed at the place. Somewhere in between February and April of ‘91, I don’t know, I guess it turned into we kind of liked each other. At first we didn’t like each other. I don’t know if it’s because she was upset because I was coming in to take her job, or I don’t know. Number one, I wasn’t looking for a girlfriend, and she was going through some of her stuff. We had dinner dates at my apartment almost every night, and we would hangout on the weekends too; we’d take drives all around Kentucky and go see things that not your typical person would think to visit. We did get to see Lincoln’s log cabin or this one Saturday night barn dance thing that they held every year. Every Saturday, we would just pack a cooler, and we would just drive. We didn’t do the typical date thing.
One Saturday, I asked her if she wanted a job and she looked at me like I was crazy. She was like, I got a job. I explained the job to her, living with me and growing old together and everything. She said, yes. Now, here we are 32 years later and we’re still rocking and rolling.
Quick Q & A:
Would you say that your time in the military helped shape how you look at marriage?
His POV: The military had a little to do with it because you’re taught a structured life. You do this, you do that, you do this. But I think being previously married taught me a lot of what I didn’t want. It worked out with your mother that I was able to communicate these things, and I still think to this day, 32 years later, we still live by that. We realize we don’t want this, but we want that. We want openness. We don’t argue, we disagree and that’s a significant difference from our previous marriages. We do a lot of compromising with each other.
Her POV: Not exactly. The part from the military that has shaped both of us is likely the routine of it all, where every part of our lives were regimented. 30 years later and it’s the routines we established together that keep us from falling away from each other. But I would say having been married before and having my parents as an example probably helped me figure out this whole marriage thing. One of the things that we talked about when he was given this job description/proposal was I need three things communicated to me: I want to know what you want, what you need, and what you expect. Those were three things that got screwed up the first time I was married because I was never a part of the equation. I couldn’t say what I wanted. I couldn’t say what I needed and I couldn’t say what I expected because he thought he was more important and everything was about him. I definitely knew what I did not want and what I was definitely going to demand this time. We work things out together, and talk to each other; we also listen to each other and negotiate over things we disagree on.
Would you say that’s something that the military shaped, that understanding of where you begin and where someone else can begin as well? How did the military help to allow for that meshing of lives? Is there anything else that the military offered specifically that basically helped shape how you communicate or approach things?
His POV: In the military you have to be adaptable. You have to be able to switch on the dime. You gotta be able to switch from doing one thing to another without stopping to think; that’s also true in marriage, you have to be adaptable. Things change. It’s not all cookie cutter. It can be anything from watching something on TV to money to what the other person wants as far as physical or emotional contact. It can be anything, and it can change and change fast. So yeah you gotta be adaptable.
Her POV: Well, I think it helped his enjoyment of physical training when we were doing it together. When we played basketball, it was just too fun. All I did was foul him. It gave us a time to kind of learn different things about each other, like how can you play together? How can you find enjoyment in one another? There were just so many different kinds of things that we did together because the military threw us together, and I think the schedule was really helpful because we are definitely schedule driven people.
photo credits: Stephanie Roberts
The Love Story from Her POV:
How we met was at the Drug and Alcohol Center in 1990. He took over a job that I left and I was supposed to give him some instructions about that job. He let me know that he really didn’t need my help, but was only tolerating listening to me. My first impression of him was that he must be one of those guys that didn’t know how to smile and I’m not sure I like him very much, which was the truth. As a result of us working in the same places, we were thrown together for physical training where we went running and played basketball; we did all kinds of different things and had to interact with one another. At one point I was asked to help him with military boards by preparing him. We tried that, and it went okay. He really didn’t think he needed much of my help, even though I had been to boards and I had been successful at moving up the ranks. We kept getting thrown together related to work. Eventually, there was a time where he invited me over for dinner and he asked if I liked lasagna because I think I had told him at some point that I was Italian. So I said yes, and he made lasagna; after the fact, I learned that he’d never done it before and he had asked his roommate for a recipe. Minus the mushrooms, it was good; I picked those out because I don’t like them. So that was our first time hanging out, just us not related to work. Next, I made him spaghetti, which was interesting too. Neither one of us was fabulous at either thing that we cooked, but it was good enough to eat. We had a good time. Later on, we did all kinds of different day trips. We packed up some sandwiches and drinks, and just drove with no specific destination. We would just say north, south, east, or west. We’d drive for a bit, maybe have a destination, but not typically, but we’d end up somewhere. And so that’s how we found some of the interesting places all over Kentucky. We spent more and more time together. At some point, I guess we decided that maybe we liked each other. He’d say things like, “I like you this much” then “I like you a little more.” We would do things like watch TV. He’d be watching stuff on TV, and I’d be reading my book. So we’d be in the same proximity, but not necessarily doing the same thing, just like a couple. When I finally baked Christmas cookies for him that was probably what solidified our relationship. I discovered that the way to his heart was through his stomach with cookies.
At some point, I started working in the hospital and that was one of my last adventures. He was also working in the hospital on a different floor, so I would drop down and pick stuff up. We didn’t get to talk much, but we got to see each other. We didn’t cross paths a lot professionally, and that’s been a good thing about us being married is that we don’t have the same job. We didn’t work in the same place. There were at least eight to nine hours a day where we were doing something else. You do need that time apart. You can’t always be together. I don’t know how anyone does that. When it got to I like you a lot, he started talking about a job description. He started with the whole, I’m thinking about offering you a job. I’m looking at him like he’s out of his ever lovin’ livin’ mind. I was thinking that I already have lots of jobs. What the hell was he talking about? That’s when he started with “it’s kind of a difficult job, long-term. It’s a hard job.” So I was trying to figure out exactly what step we were headed towards because it really wasn’t making any sense to me. He finally said, “I like you and I want to hang around with you more. What do you think about getting married?” So it wasn’t on your down-on-one-knee proposal. Our whole story was never about flowers or typical dating schemes.
How they celebrate Veterans Day:
Her POV: Well, one of the things that’s been interesting about Veterans Day is that they honor veterans in a variety of different kinds of ways on either the day itself or the full weekend if it falls on the weekend like it does this particular year. They’re doing things Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So it provides us an opportunity to go places. Your dad wears his hat and I wear my T-shirt, even though everybody pretty much ignores it, and these places give us a chance to go out and have a meal. We make a plan, and this has become a yearly date, if we both have it off. There typically are many places where we can go for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if we want to, which is why we plan ahead. We plan the entire day together from wherever we go for breakfast to wherever we end up at for dinner. We don’t double dip more than that one day because that’s not what it’s about.
His POV: Well, for me, to take it back a minute; for a long time, I didn’t celebrate Veterans Day when I first got out. I did not celebrate that I was a veteran. I was just, like “okay I served in the military; no big deal.” But as I got older it started dawning on me that it’s not about the freebies; it’s a chance to talk to fellow servicemen and women who served before me, after me, or with me. For me, it’s about just talking to them and hearing their stories. Sure, it’s nice to get a free meal; I’ll admit it, but for me this day every year is a chance to go and just talk to other veterans, who relate and talk about things only we understand. Once I realized that, that’s when I started saying, “okay, Veterans Day is for me. I’m a veteran. I served; just because I did not fight in a war, I still gave eight years of my life to protect this country, so I’m going to enjoy my day that they give me.”
Her POV: One of the people that we got to meet was a poet that showed up at Shoney’s every year, and she would give stuff out. So I have several things of hers. I think I still have a couple of pens with her name on it lying around. She would sometimes read her poems and they were incredible. Meeting people like her is just too cool. I think we’ve seen her for three or four years. Last year we didn’t see her, though, so I don’t know what happened to her because Shoney’s closed and we didn’t see her anywhere else. But yeah, she was one person that we loved seeing because she was just so friendly.
His POV: But going out, like your mom said, we make a plan. We don’t hit every restaurant, every store, every hotel, whatever. I mean, you could sit there and I could go to 20 places this Saturday easily, but that’s not what it’s about. We do something for breakfast, we usually do something for lunch, and we do something for dinner. If for some reason we can get to a store, and the store wants to give us a discount, that’s fine. Half the time we don’t need anything, so we don’t go.
Her POV: Throughout the year, there’ll be places that we don’t expect it but he’ll have his hat on and they’ll give us a discount if we’re together or sometimes when he’s out by himself.
His POV: The coolest thing was when a little kid at Topgolf saw my hat, and had his parents pay for our golf. We had paid the food tab, and our golf time had ended; so I went to pay, and that’s when our waitress let us know that the family next to us had paid for our golf time because the young boy wanted to say thank you to me for my service, not realizing my wife was a veteran also. That’s the one out of all my years as a veteran that gets me. I never expected it.
photo credits: Stephanie Roberts