AARP Hearing Center
It was 1970.
I was a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), marching for peace and wielding a protest sign.
Getty Images/AARP
You can subscribe here to AARP Veteran Report, a free e-newsletter published every two weeks. If you have feedback or a story idea then please contact us here.
My future husband supported Richard Nixon, was flying in a helicopter over rice paddies and clutched an M16.
That the likes of the two of us should meet and fall in love was nowhere in my consciousness. If a fortune-teller had shown me this future, I would have demanded a refund.
But there we were, several years later, at a party where neither of us belonged. The men, mostly airline pilots, were of no interest to me. Instead, my heart riveted to the tall, wiry guy with a sexy beard.
That tall, handsome man insists he had his eyes on a striking blonde until I intervened.
There was no denying what brought us together: that animal magnetism that makes two people unable to sleep, eat or think unless they are with each other.
Within weeks we were a couple. And we began to learn about each other’s lives.
He doled out his war experiences in snippets, tiny morsels he fed me whenever I persisted. But it wasn’t an easy topic for him to discuss.
Upon coming home from Vietnam, he had walked off the plane and into the bathroom, where he took off his uniform and stuffed it into the trash. He walked out a civilian, pushing his war experiences to the far corners of his mind to gather cobwebs.
He is still a civilian, but the memories couldn’t stay buried forever. They came rushing forward after he was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor attributed to Agent Orange.
One day during his recuperation, he asked me if I wanted to go to the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) bar for a drink.
That cramped, smoky room was not my idea of a good time.
But after years of subjecting him to poetry readings, vintage markets and incense to keep the spiritual balance in our home, I figured I owed him this much.
