Twenty-nine years ago today I got a phone call from Rhode Island. The man of my dreams was on the other end. We'd been dating for several months, but ours had become a long-distance relationship while he attended the U.S. Navy's Officer Candidate School (OCS) in the city of Newport. That day he'd gotten his orders for where he'd be stationed after he finished OCS in October. To my deep surprise I learned he was to be stationed in Denver, the city where I'd grown up and still resided as I attended the University of Colorado.
Denver? My head spun. What on earth would a new naval officer do in the land-locked capital of Colorado? I tried to make sense of this wonderful news but simply couldn't without more information. Jim quickly explained he would be working in a recruiting office before attending Nuclear Power School in Orlando the following March.
Before I could even begin to grasp the implications for the two of us, Jim had a question for me. "Will you marry me?" Unbeknownst to me, he had requested the recruiting-office billet, not knowing whether he stood a chance of getting it. The shuffling paperwork in an office would slow his progress toward becoming a nuclear engineer on one of the country's submarines. However, Jim recognized that if he could get the Denver billet, the five-month shore duty would allow an unheard-of window for a wedding during the two years of submarine training which would begin in Orlando and then require four cross-country moves.
I'd learn all these details at a later date. That night I just blissfully squealed, "Yeeeeessssss!!!!!" into the receiver.
The rest as they say is history!
