The Sailor and the Senorita Chapter One WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES Life on board a US Navy warship can be a lonely life. No news is current, whether its world news or the lives of your family and friends. Days pass unendingly. Worries and fears are magnified exponentially. Only three months before, I had been sitting on the beach at Hanauma Bay, Hawaii with my fiance Michelle Hart only days before we were to be married. Life was wonderous and we had plans to last us until old age. One night while Michelle was out shopping with her friends, I answered a phone call at her apartment. It was her brother, their father had a heart attack and had died. It was left to me to tell her. Only a few days before, I had flown in from Norfolk, Virginia, for our ceremony and would have to leave only a few days after for a six month deployment to the Mediterranean Sea. I knew this meant we would have to postpone our wedding for her to return to Connecticut for the funeral. We left the next morning on a non-stop to Chicago. Michele had fallen apart at my news and was in a truly pitiful state, me holding her, not knowing the words to soothe her pain. In Chicago we separated, at her insistence. She continued on to Hartford and I to see my family in Little Rock. I later learned that Michelles mother had insisted that it was in part Michelle and my fault for her Fathers death and she felt it wasnt the right time to meet her family. Right up until my ship departed, I tried over and over to reach Michelle, only to be constantly rebuffed by her Mother and brother. She was sleeping and couldnt be woken, she was at the funeral home, any number of excuses to keep me from talking to her until I was left with no options but to board the USS Farragut for our six month deployment. I was relieved to get a letter the day we left. She said she knew that I had been trying to reach her or at least she suspected that I had and she loved me and would wait for me. Each day aboard the Farragut was so much the same. We sailed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for a three day stop, and to Vieques Island to test our guns and then three weeks to Haifa, Israel. It seemed strange to be sitting in a cafe in Haifa next to a couple of very attractive girls, they dressed in IDF uniforms and carrying M-16s. It was normal for them, but very odd for me. It was there in Haifa where the real danger of our mission began to set in for me. This wasnt going to be a normal mission for us. There was too much danger in the world at that time and as Americans we were at the center of that danger. In the last year both the U.S. Embassy and the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon had been bombed and Americans were being targeted for death and kidnapping everywhere. I felt safe onboard ship, but I was also a member of the Joint Information Bureau and could be put into action anywhere, anytime if something involved the US Military. It all made me yearn even more powerfully for the day we would return to Norfolk. My dreams and thoughts were always of Michelle. I often recalled when we had first met as students at the Defense Information School in Indianapolis. We were of only a handful of students from the Navy. She was there to learn to be a broadcaster and I was there to train for the Joint Information Bureau. She was a most attractive woman, tall and slim, with an olive complection, like she was tanned even in the midst of winter. With short bobbed auburn hair, she was a real beauty sitting at the broadcasting desk, smiling always and talking in that precise manner for which she was trained. Michelle and I from the first day always kept to ourselves. We were the stars of our classes and we both were striving to finish at the top, knowing well the reward that distinction would merit. We studied late into the night in a well lit common area and then as the night grew later we walked to a picnic area where she would entertain me with her guitar and singing. She had so many talents, so much wonderment in her being. Michelles Father had met her Mother, when he was a Naval Officer in France after the Second World War. He was a television advertising executive in Hartford, Ct. until he became sick and lost his job. Michelle was 20 and just starting her junior year at the University of Connecticut. She had to drop out because her family couldnt support both her and her brothers tuition. Her brother Phillip, was in his final years of Pharmacy School at the University of Rhode Island. Each night, I sat alone in the television studio playing movies and television programs on the ships closed circuit system. It afforded me ample time to reflect and write. There were so many questions I had for Michelle, but each time I wrote them, I could only see my questions causing more pain. Questions like, “Why didnt you call my parents house?” She had to know I was suffering right along with her. It was during this time that I came to appreciate what people are saying when they say long distance romances dont work, because they dont! With every word I wrote Michelle, I could feel a disconnect the relationship was slipping away. Who was I kidding, I would tell myself. Michelle and I were from two absolutely different worlds to be honest. I was a hick! I was born in Texas and raised in South Carolina, Mississippi and Oklahoma. I graduated in Colorado, but I never loosened the grip on my southern roots. No way in hell was I going to live in Connecticut or New York or any of the places Michelle spoke of. Well Hawaii maybe. The one fact left for me to face, I still loved her and I believed she loved me. I couldnt hurt such a dear, sweet person. Turned out, I didnt have to. The morning my ship pulled into Malaga, Spain, December 24, 1983, we had a massive mail call. It had been nearly three weeks since we had last received mail and all our Christmas cards, gifts, letters and care packages were waiting for us. I put all my mail in order as to the date and began opening them. All of Michelles letters told me of her love for me, that her transfer to the offices of Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet had been approved and shed be in Norfolk by the time my ship returned and then the letter “Im sorry Bill, but I have come to believe it will never work for us, I will love you forever, Im sorry! Shes sorry! Who the hell does she think she is. I was thinking about calling it off. Women, damn them all, except my Mom and sister., of course, they really will LOVE ME FOREVER!
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 03:08:26 +0000
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