A Valentine For The Man I Love

 This post contains a LOT of pictures.  This is a love story about the most patient, kind, talented, and unusual man I have ever met.  My husband  Matthew.  The picture above this paragraph was made on our wedding day in 1984.  Our expressions may look like true love, but it is really relief because we are standing over the air conditioning vent.
We met in a Star Trek fan club that I had joined, and his mother and sister had joined.  They were campaigning for more members, so Matt's mother convinced him that he should join.  At the "launching party" for our new chapter of the club, Matt kept ending up next to me, and he started calling me after the party to talk  We talked almost every day.   He made me laugh.  Sometimes so hard that I'd cry.  His sense of humor is even more evil than mine.
He was active duty Air Force when we met.  A Staff Sergeant (he made rank early) and an aircraft loadmaster on C-141s.  He was stationed at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, CA.
We dated for about three months before we knew it was love.  He asked me to marry him on my birthday in 1984.  My engagement ring has an amethyst in it because that is my birthstone, and also because he wanted to continue making house payments.  When he got a big re-enlistment bonus, instead of buying a car, he bought a house.  (He had his Mom and Sister and nephew living with him when I met him, one reason he had bought the house.)

Here are a few more wedding pictures.  I think we were a pretty cute couple.

 After we were married, he taught me how to ride a bike again.  He had ridden with a minor racing team in Panama when he was a teen growing up in the Canal Zone.  He had also ridden track.  He could track stand a regular road bike longer than almost any other human being I have ever seen.

He has the patience of a saint.  He put up with more whining and complaining, and me almost dumping us both off our tandem bike, and he still loves me. 
 (And I still love him even though I SWEAR he ran over every bump he could find on that tandem just to launch me off that back seat.)

He got to go back to Panama once in a while on air drop missions.  This picture is him pulling in the jump platform on a C-141 after the jumpers have all exited the aircraft. 

I have always been so proud of him and his dedication to his service to this country.  It was a job he loved, and he did it well.    I never minded the late night trips to the base to either drop him off or pick him up.  It was worth it.  He was worth it.  I loved going out to the base with him to watch the planes coming in or doing pilot training.  Some nights he was at the squadron waiting to find out if the airdrop birds had in fact dropped, and whether they needed to go help unload, or at the very least retrieve their CDS  buffer board.  I sometimes took dinner in the crockpot to share with whoever was waiting with him.  His nickname was Army-N-Stead, and they all called me Mrs. Army.  I was always proud to be his, I know he was well-respected by the guys he worked with.

You can tell he was still active duty in the picture at my mom's house where he was carving the turkey.  (After my Pop died, Matt got to do that job when we were visiting, unless my brother wanted to.  )
Matt has always taken such good care of me.  He worried about leaving me alone in San Bernardino, but he made it as safe as possible.  He used to leave me love notes scattered around the house before he went TDY.  He'd hide them in my dresser drawers, in the spice rack in the pantry, in my books, anywhere I'd come upon them unexpectedly.
And every time he came home, it was a very romantic occasion.  Sometimes I miss those days, because we were both a lot more romantic, and I think we were both more aware of the fact that life is short, and you really aren't guaranteed a tomorrow.  Every time I dropped him at that squadron, it could have been the last time I ever saw him.  That was always in the back of our minds.  Even in peacetime, flying airdrop missions as he so often did is not exactly the safest game in town.  His squadron lost a crew to a crash while we were at Norton.  They flew right into a mountainside during a low level training  mission.

 Here is our house in San Bernardino where we lived for the first five years we were married.  It was small, old, and had interesting wiring.  But it was enough for us.  We were very happy there, and when we got orders to go to Germany, we worked hard to fix it up and sell it.

 Here at the right is a picture of Matt on a C-130.  He cross-trained to C-130s before we went to Germany.  He has so many hours in both C-141s and C-130s, that for awhile, it seemed he had spent  most of his life in flight.    I always enjoyed working with him when the squadron needed spouses to support air show activities, and even once to pack some CDS kits for the squadron in Germany because they were so short handed.  Matt had a whole system set up for packing the kits, with detailed instructions.  Two of us packed, and an airman inspected the finished kits to make sure they were all right before they got put on the shelf. 

While we were in Germany, Desert Shield and Desert Storm happened.  Matt had to leave on rather short notice, and there was no way of knowing when (or if) he'd come back.  Those seven months were nerve wracking.  How the folks survive the long tours in Iraq and Afganistan is beyond me.  I know we were blessed in that I was out on a farm with wonderful German landlords who more or less adopted me, and Matt was on Cargo aircraft, which because of their size and tendency to fly slowly, were always kept at bases farther to the rear of any action until and unless troops and/or cargo needed to be dropped. 

It still thrills me to hear a C-130.  It reminds me of the day he came home from Desert Storm.  The whole SKY was full of C-130s coming home, and on the ramp, all us wives and the Germans were cheering non-stop.

The photo above left was made when he got to come home for Christmas during Desert Shield.  His crew drew the straw that let them bring the airplane back that was scheduled for maintenance at that time.  (With C-130s the age those birds were, maintenance was religiously observed.  It was the only reason they were still flyable.)


After the Gulf War,  Matt cross trained to Ops Resource Management.  His shoulder had been messed up one too many times by getting rammed into a pallet that got stuck when they were loading it.  He didn't fly any more after that.  He still got to work 12 hour shifts in Current Operations at Rhein- Main Air Base, where he was NCOIC of the Current Operations office until we PCSed to Tinker in 1993.

He was in the Ops Resource Center at the 966th AWACS training squadron here at Tinker until 1998 when he retired.  He was NCOIC of the section when he retired

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We have been through a lot in our almost 29 years, and though things occasionally get tense, we are still just as much in love as we were then.  Though the spinal cord surgery he had eight years ago has affected many things about him, like made him gain a ton of weight and made it hard to get off, and  reduced his mobility in some ways, he still keeps going, works hard, and does so many nice things for me.
He now works for the Postal Service as a contractor for OU.  He works at the Training center putting courses online so fewer people have to travel for necessary training, and they can train more people at once.  He is putting all his hard won computer expertise to good use.
He takes good care of me still, and he still puts up with my quirks even though he no longer has the respite of going TDY.
He is still funny, and he can still make my knees weak. 


The picture below was made on Christmas Day 2009.  We don't have any really good pictures of us together that are more recent.

My darling Matthew, there can never be another that can make me feel the way you do.  Right from the start, you got me.  You understood, you never belittled my fan interests, you shared some of them, and you have always encouraged me to try new things, to find my strengths, even when I am sure I will fall spectacularly on my face. I think the true testimony to our love is that we are both still here.  We haven't killed each other yet!  I know both of us are too stubborn to ever contemplate divorce.  We made a promise before God and our friends and families, and we both honor our promises.  You have certainly loved me and put up with me, and cared for me, in situations that could not have always been easy for you.  Thanks for a great life, and here's hoping for at least 29 more years!