A Sentimental Journey

Last week I got a message from a person with a far-left ideology in his religious and political beliefs; he made fun of me and said it was childish for me to have Snoopy on my profile, implying a lack of credibility on my part because of it.

Well Snoopy is a very important part of my life, and is how I met my wife, so I keep a lot of comics with him as a pilot, he’s on my Facebook profile and there are a lot of Snoopy things all over our house.  Now let me tell you the story of how all this came about!

On July 29, 1974, my brother was heading home from Ft. Hood, TX, after getting out of the Army so he stopped by Ft. Bragg on the way home to Springfield, OH, to take me with him.  It was my last leave (of 2 weeks), seven months before I got out of the Army.  This is a puzzle piece.

A year or so earlier my grandmother sent me a Snoopy pin as you see in the photo above (it is 1-inch high). She sent me that because she thought it would be appreciated since I was a pilot (I hold a commercial pilot license for single- and multi-engined airplanes, and helicopters; I also hold an instrument rating for airplanes.) I loved flying and intended to work as a pilot after I left service; I ended up as an air traffic controller instead but I still kept flying, including flying skydivers, flying Civil Air Patrol missions and ferrying planes. 

Anyway, I pinned it on my flight jacket sleeve-pocket. One day I was coming into the barracks as another guy was going out and I got too close to the locker: Snoopy slid up underneath the edge and snapped off.  Puzzle piece two.

How about puzzle piece number three: I had become a Christian in January 1974 and began thinking about what I’d do when I left the Army (I entered active duty 6/17/70 and left the Army on 2/27/75). Part of that was thinking about marrying in the future and I began praying that the Lord would lead me to a wife! (He answered that prayer pretty quick!)

On July 31, 1974 I asked my grandmother where she got the pin because I wanted to replace it.  She told me she got it from a card store at the mall.  Puzzle piece four.  

Now the rest of the story picks up the next day, August 1st.

The Springfield mall had two card stores: Hallmark and The Card Cage.  I tried Hallmark first and had no luck. So I went to The Card Cage. Not having the pin with me, I described it to the cashier who had no idea what I was talking about. But a few feet away was Jill, putting stuff on a shelf and she said she knew where they were, having just put them away. So she took the other girl's place at the register after bringing me the pin. 

Just being friendly, Jill asked what I wanted the pin for (after all, it's not every day a 22-year-old guy wants a Snoopy pin!). I told her he was my wingman. 

Of course that got her curious and she asked what a wingman was so I explained what it was and also said that I was a pilot. She immediately asked if I was based at Wright-Patterson AFB (20 min away) because I obviously had that military look and she told me her dad worked there as a civilian engineer at Research & Development.

I told her I was a civilian pilot because the military didn't like my vision but that I was indeed in the military - "A rompin', stompin', dancin', romancin', super-dooper U.S. paratrooper."  Great pickup line, eh?

Well that got her chuckling. I told her I was on leave visiting my mom and was heading out to Denver in a few days to visit my dad. She started talking about how she loved the mountains and then we talked about various things for about 10 minutes; then she had customers and I left. 

Ah, but now I had a few days in town so I decided to ask her out and the next day I showed up at the store and did just that. She told me she had to ask her parents and I could come back the next day!  It seems she was 18, had just graduated high school a couple months earlier and was going to start college at Wright State in Dayton. She was somewhat taken aback by this older guy asking her out!

So the next day I met her again and we went out that evening after she got off work. And the next day, and the next day, and I never went to Colorado; spent two weeks dating her! (Not long after this she bought earrings identical to — but smaller than — the pin; you can barely make them out in this photo, taken 9/8/74).

When I went back to duty we began a long-distance relationship via daily letters and a weekly phone call. I was able to get a 3-day pass in September and bought a car (a blue 1972 Super Beetle) just to go see her. Got Columbus Day weekend off in October, a 4-day pass for Thanksgiving, and a 3-day pass for Christmas (10 hour drive, by the way).  And then didn't see her again until the day I got out. By then she had transferred to Ohio State. 

I decided to get a job in Columbus so as to be near her. I worked six weeks as a laborer in construction, then got a job with the main P.O. in Columbus working midnights and weekends (until the end of Sept 1978 when we moved to the Chicago area). Of course this made dating a bit difficult because we could only meet after school and before I left for work. Then of course Spring and Summer breaks she went home (1.5 hrs away) so we were back to long-distance relationships until we married on August 1, 1976 — she picked the day because it was the anniversary of our meeting.

Over the years the original pin I had which broke has been a fixture on the dashboard of my VW and then our cars; the one I bought from her eventually broke and became the 12 in a clock she embroidered and framed. A few years back we decided we wanted to see if there was a way to find those pins, which hadn’t been sold for decades, and we indeed found a couple brand new on e-bay. So now we both have one (the photo above has him on my dark blue wool sweater). Jill has also embroidered copies on both my denim jackets.

And now you know the rest of the story!