The story of how we met on Monday, March 15, 1982 has been told several times before, but it is my way of recognizing what a wonderful meeting and great results occurred from that day. As i have said many times before, i am one lucky man.

The pastor who married us forty-one years ago just left with his wife to catch a plane back to New England. My brother Joe and his wife Carla have been here since Friday. Their daughter Kate, son-in-law Conor and children, Leo, Oona, and Niamh, came the next day. i gave the men a tour of Navy ships and we joined the women in Coronado on Sunday, and yesterday, we went to the zoo. Great fun. This old man is tired.

So today, often filled with celebratory dinners, will be quiet, rest, reflection, and turning the house into a two person affair. That affair has be going on for longer than 41 years, but that wedding my brother performed was forty-one years ago today. We will have a quiet small dinner and an upscale one later this week.

i won’t belabor the subject here. i will just repeat the great story i’ve told many times about how we met:

It was early March 1982. i was the Weapons Officer of the USS Okinawa (LPH 3) home ported in San Diego. The Weapons Officer billet was titled “First Lieutenant” on other amphibious helicopter carriers. Regardless, it meant i was charge in pretty much everything not aviation, engineering, operations, or supply related.

One of those responsibilities was being in charge of the quarterdeck where all visitors entered the ship. From previous regimes, we had a large red torah that spanned the entrance into the helicopter deck below the flight deck. It was impressive, but Captain Dave Rogers called me to his cabin one afternoon. “Jim, I want our quarterdeck to be the best quarterdeck on the base. I want it to be the most impressive and known to be the best by everyone home ported here.”

I, of course, replied, “Aye, Aye, Sir!”

i discussed how we could make the quarterdeck renowned  across the waterfront with my division officers and Boatswain Warrant Officer 4 (CWO4) Ellis. The Bosun had a bit of a beer gut. He was married to a wonderful Filipino woman who created a lovely macramé lanyard for the boatswain pipe the bosun gave me when i was transferred. She was about 4’8″ and almost that wide. Great lady, just a bit wide.

My team came up with the idea of a sitting area next to the quarterdeck. At the time, when guests or visitors came aboard, they had to wait for the watch to contact whomever they were there to see. That sailor or officer would have to come to the quarterdeck to escort the visitor. Often, the time it took to get to the quarterdeck was lengthy.

So we decided we could create a sitting area with panels, some chairs, maybe a sofa, and hang framed photographs about the Oki on the walls. That way, the visitor wouldn’t have to stand around in the working bay of the helicopter deck. Great idea.

We had to decide where and how to get panels. Since the Bosun and his first class were going to make a supply run Friday, the next day, i asked them to check out panels while they were on their run. Liberty call was early and the Bosun and his first class left around 1300. They were dressed in their standard liberty civies. The Bosun had on Levis with a blue tee shirt with his thick black hair combed back as much as it could to resemble a ducktail. His first class had on his biker’s jeans, white tee shirt with a leather jacket and a silver chain dangling down from the jeans. He had straw blond hair also combed back and the gap of a missing tooth was the final touch. They left for their mission.

i had a bunch of paperwork to work through and continued on after liberty call. The bosun came into the office with several boxes of toilet paper (i never understood why he didn’t get it through supply).

“i didn’t think you would be coming back to the ship, Bosun,” i remarked.

“Well, i didn’t want to keep this stuff at home over the weekend,” he replied.

“Did you find any panels?”

“Well sir, we went to Dixieline (a local lumber and home center). They didn’t have them, but they told us to go to Parron-Hall.”

“Parron-Hall?” i puzzled.

“Yes sir. They’re an office furniture place downtown across from the county admin building. We went there, but that place was way too classy for us. They had desks in the showroom worth more than my house.

“You are gonna have to go down there and see about them panels.”

Aww, come on, Bosun, i have a lot on my plate.”

“No sir, you are gonna have to go down there. It’s on Ash Street.”

Then he added, ” You know sir, the woman who waited on us was really pretty. i noticed she didn’t have a ring on her finger. i’m pretty sure she’s single.

“And she’s way too skinny for me.”

Epilogue

Midday on the next Monday, i drove down to Parron-Hall Office Materials. i asked the receptionist to see the person who had given her business card to Bosun. i stood at the entrance to the showroom. Maureen came walking across the show room with the sun shining in the window behind her (think Glenn Close in “The Natural,” only prettier). She claims i had my piss cutter on my head. That, of course, is not correct: i am a country boy from Lebanon, Tennessee raised correctly by my parents, Army ROTC at Castle Heights, a Naval career and, by the way, an officer and a gentleman. My hat was off.

We had numerous discussions about the panels, which required about four or five “business” lunches over the five or six weeks for the panels to arrive. When the deal was done, i asked for that date to see John Lee Hooker at the Belly Up Tavern. We attended several events over the summer including sailing with JD in the “Fly a Kite” race where we became (or at least JD became) a legend. We went out to dinner too many times to count.

Then, on July 30, 1983, we were married in her father’s backyard.

This was written in 1971 when i was working as a sports reporter for The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York. i was a champion of traditional (and the right way to write a news story as taught to me by “Coach” JB Leftwich at Castle Heights and Fred Russell at The Nashville Banner). A young and new reporter wrote the story about a man who had epilepsy and struggling had committed suicide by jumping from the fifth floor of the Watertown YMCA.

i was irate at the article because it violated the rules that were my bible for print journalism. When i complained, my great friend John B. Johnson pulled me aside and calmed me down. He was right, of course. i was out of line. When i got home that afternoon, i sat down and wrote this:

no one heard
his epileptic call of delight;
later, no one would even know
the crass and un-smiled-upon disease
had crashed his brain
as he leaped
from his fifth floor room window
with that call of delight
but
his mind raced onward
into the ecstasy of madness
as he dwindled toward oblivion
but yet,
not quite oblivion
as his wish for recognition
would also be buried
amidst the headline of
“Man Killed In Fall Out of Window;”
even his name was plummeted
into the obscurity of
second paragraphville;
his falling from grace, even in his delight
from the YMCA’s fifth floor,
past the gym of happiness
and
showers of cleanliness
against the cobbler’s sign
(which should have been symbolic
but
even that as coincidental)
onto
“the concrete of the sidewalk below”
according to the newspaper reporter,
but
did little to shatter
the stillness of early morning when
the milkman continued to drop his bottles on the doorsteps
and
the bicycled paperboys thudded their paper missiles
against the walls of the porches
long before the sun rose
to meet the day,
refusing to yet relent
to storms of winter;
the elevator even disregarded
the sacrifice of delight,
carefully coasting down and up
under the auspices of the new elevator man
whose name no one knew
and
who would move into the YMCA the next day
so he, that man whom epilepsy had possessed
to end it all with a yell of delight
passed on
in his fit;
not one soul, not even the newspaper reporter,
acknowledged
it was the disease of Caesar.

If you haven’t noticed, i am going through old stuff, trying to clean up my files. Of course, i will never achieve that goal, but it’s fun to work at it, and what else do i have to do that is productive. This was written back home, i’m guessing for Thanksgiving, referring to the drear of a basement dorm room in Nashville. i still like it.

the sun is shining outside, but it is cold;
the sky is blue outside, but the trees are bare;
the wind whispers softly, but its coldness bites into the skin;
the windows reflect the sparkling sunshine, but the glare hurts the eyes.

i walked to the top of the hill and looked down on the lights of the city,
hoping to remember something beautiful and warm,
but the memories brought sadness
because they were of the past instead of the present;

a tear came to my eye, and the wind made the tear cold.
i was alone; the fact burned my heart as it chilled my soul;
i watched with sad amusement as two squirrels
in the lone tree on the hill chattered to one another;

i walked down the hill back to my lonely room,
four walls, bare lights, blaring radio, books, un-emptied ashtrays.

the sun is shining outside but it is cold;
the sky is blue outside, but the trees are bare;
the wind whispers softly but its coldness bites into the skin;
the windows reflect the sparkling sunshine;
but the glare hurts the eyes,

and all is calm

but yet…

                                      

i wrote this in 1962, right after i received a letter that revealed my relationship with a beautiful young woman from Cleveland, Ohio, whom i had met while she was visiting relatives in Lebanon, Tennessee, was over. Her name was Gay. i find it interesting that i used a ship at sea to describe my feelings. i did not go to sea on a ship until the next summer.

i stood on the old bridge,
leaning forward against the rail,
a tear traced its lonely way
down my cheek;
the wind whisked the tear away;
the pebble i dropped into
the deep water below
shattered the moonlight
into a thousand pieces of ripples;

i remembered;
another tear began its futile journey
against the wind

i remembered her:
soft lips, soft like the moon’s shattered reflection,
tender touch, tender as the wind carrying tears away;
gone
but
she would be back;
after all she had promised;
everything was quiet;
i waited.

Note: she never came back.

We returned to the Southwest corner this afternoon. We just had four wonderful days of Peace in the Valley.

No, it wasn’t the peace in the valley in the religious song written by Thomas Dorsey made immensely popular by Elvis, but originally sung and sung better by Mahalia Jackson. It was our peace and the valley was Sonoma’s. Regardless, it provided us with peace in the valley.

The primary reason was our stay was at Alan and Maren Hick’s home adjacent to the Sebastiani vinyards. The Hicks homestead is about as peaceful as you can get. Alan, Maren, and i have been friends since we were at Vanderbilt together 62-64. The friendship has never waned even though my Navy career and Alan’s shipping career primarily with Pacific Container Lines took us far away for years.

When Maureen met Maren at a Vandy reunion in 2006, it was a instant friendship. Their likes and interests are an amazing match.

Our ventures from peace in the valley were intriguing. Alan and Maren are very good at allowing us to learn.

On Thursday, we walked through the past. Alan drove us to Mare Island. The US Navy’s first presence on the West Coast was on Mare Island in 1849. The first permanent Navy dry dock on the West Coast was completed in 1891. It was made of granite, not concrete.

Many buildings dating back to the 1800s are still standing. The area has been declared a National Historic Landmark. Several of the huge cranes for dry dock and ship maintenance services, no longer in use, stand as if they were ready to roll again, sentinels looking out on the past. Mansions, formerly the residences of Naval officers, stand majestically and serve many purposes. In the middle of it all is the Navy chapel, the first interdenominational chapel in the Navy. It has Tiffany created stained windows and is a beautiful and stately evidence of the past. As we drove past the old Navy cemetery and then walked up the hills to a promontory where the base golf course once sprawled, now only imagined on the open spaces where there were once fairways.

As we walked, i commented to Alan that the experience was beautifully eerie. After all, one of its first commanders was Commander David Farragut in the 1850s, of the later civil war quote “Damn the torpedoes” .

The other travels out of peace in the valley were equally intriguing.

It was a great weekend. The Hicks, as usual, gave us respite from our daily dallying in the Southwest corner. Thank you, Alan and Maren.

i close with the lyrics of “Peace in the Valley.” For me, they seem to fit:

Oh well, I’m tired and so weary,
But I must go along,
‘Til the Lord comes and calls
Calls me away, oh, yes;
Well, the morn-ing is bright,
And the Lamb the Light,
And the night, Night is as fair
as the day, oh, yes.
There will be peace in the valley for me, some day;
There will be peace in the valley for me, oh Lord I pray;
There’ll be no sadness, no sorrow,
No trouble, trouble I see;
There will be peace in the valley for me.

There the flow’rs will be blooming,
and the grass will be green,
And the skies will be clear
and serene, oh, Yes;
Well the sun ever beams,
in this valley of dreams,
And no clouds there will ever
be seen, oh, yes.
There will be peace in the valley for me, some day;
There will be peace in the valley for me, oh Lord I pray;
There’ll be no sadness, no sorrow,
No trouble, trouble I see;
There will be peace in the valley for me.

Well the bear will be gentle,
And the wolf will be tame,
And the lion shall lay down
By the lamb, oh, yes;
And the beast from the wild,
Shall be led by a child
And I’ll be changed
Changed from this creature
that I am, oh, yes.

There will be peace in the valley for me, some day;
There will be peace in the valley for me, oh Lord I pray;
There’ll be no sadness, no sorrow,
No trouble, trouble I see;
There will be peace in the valley for me.