February 14, 2020 • 24 mins
Every veteran we’ve sat with this season has gushed about the “love of their life” -- the woman who worked hard at the hospital or factory or office or homestead and dutifully penned letters while they were away in the Service. They’ve wowed us with not only their love’s origin story, but the lifetime commitment they kept. And we’ve sat with them as they’ve missed and mourned that loved one -- coincidentally, the majority of our veterans this season are widowers.
And so in this episode, Frank Devita, John Bistrica, Ray Stanley Boutwell, Norman Rubin, and Pat D’Ambrosio return to tell a little about the women who made their life so complete. We share their stories simply, in a tribute to those who so supported them during the war, and long after.
Find photos of these couples - as well as those not shared in this episode - at www.ServicePodcast.org, where you can also share your Service stories and leave messages for all of the veterans you hear on Service.
And we’re always sharing extra audio and nerdy food history on social media - we’re @servicepodcast on Instagram and Facebook.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're tuning into service, Johnny, the strict private first class
that are in stories of hunger and war. They joined
the service. Remember Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor, a production from
My Heart Radio. We used to just give these people
the food from my miss Kits. You ain't what you
could get, and be thankful well what you will get
(00:23):
In I'm your host, Jacqueline Raposo, before peeling potatoes, he
told me that he spent the war peeling potatoes in
the bottom of the chew peel potatos in BA. I
think she was talking about the guy she's been dating
(00:44):
you and you can't go out And Georgia, that's me
at the kitchen table with my grandparents, Pat and Fancy
d Ambrosio from our first episode. They were married for
seventy years before my Nana passed away last April. And
as I've and spending a lot of time with our
World War Two veterans since, I've noticed something every single
(01:08):
one of them shared with me. A love story, A
big love story, one that outlasted the Great Depression and
the draft and trains and ships and machine gun bullets
and the divorce rates that spiked immediately after the War
one that lasted and outlasted, and is so ingrained in
(01:30):
their hearts and minds that their love stories spilled out
even when other memories of combat or cuisine failed them.
As we spoke, if you've listened through a good number
of our service stories, you might have been wondering where
are the women. It's a good question, and love and
service are related. Here. We'll hear about women's direct contributions
(01:54):
to the Allied cause in an episode with an army
nurse we have coming up. But by fewer than twenty
four percent of married women were working outside of the home.
Because let's remember that this was a time before packaged
foods and microwaves and washing machines and ready made clothes.
Families made much of what they consumed, and that work
(02:16):
fell to the women, and so when it comes to service,
that is largely where we find them, canning vegetables, sending
v mail packages, rolling bandages, sewing in factories, nursing in hospitals,
and waiting to be wives until their boys came home.
We're going to hear about a few of these women
(02:38):
by revisiting some of their veterans love stories, sharing them
simply and unadorned. We start with Dorothy and Frank Da Vita.
In her husband's episode Why Am I Alive? Frank shared
how he spent almost three years aboard a Coast Guard
ship transporting Army troops to the Normandy beaches on D Day,
(02:59):
supplying the Allies with food in Scotland, and stealing steaks
from the officers to grow up in his gunnery shack.
I met Frank and his youngest son, Richard, at Frank's
home in New Jersey. Dot was present everywhere, in the
cornucopia of photos on their mantle and in the cookbook
that Richard placed in my lap. Here a little of
(03:21):
their story. Yeah, I love my mom, I love my family,
very family. Ore. You know Italians are I said that
you gotta have the veal covers Sudday. You have to
have the post right otherwise you're not a day. I
gotta admit my mom was not the greatest cook. How
(03:42):
did that fish on Friday? And she didn't know how
to cook fish? Really, so I never liked fish. Then
when I got married to my wife, she knew how
to cook fish, and for the first time in my
life I liked fish. And when did you get married?
I got married my wife was the best cook. I
was never born, tell me about it. She was to
see and Nodan Sicily was conquered by everybody. So they
(04:06):
have a conglamorration of different ethnic foods, and she knew
all about those. My mother was no ladan. So she
used to make homemade pasta, the long pasta. She put
a stick on one chip to the other year, and
on the sticks she would wrap the pasta. So some guy,
I don't want to swer any names, he came in
the door, like thunderbolt, you knocked the old the pasta?
(04:29):
Who was that? How old? That's twelve years old? That?
How much cooking did you do while you were married?
I never cooked. I didn't have to boil water. She
used to have a lot of recipes, and this because
when they said, uh, why don't you write them down?
So she wrote them all down. And my grandson and
(04:49):
a lot of couple of people put in the book
for him some great recipes in it. Through this book,
now I became a cook. What are you cooking that?
You're like, Oh, yeah, I got that. I make a
great pizza, make the dough to make the model. Others
put the soldiers on. So I became a cook only
through this book? What does food mean to you? Everything?
(05:09):
I'm Talian? You know the times the only people are
they reading, they're talking about food. Right. You go to
somebody's house, the first thing you say, are you angry?
What's something? And my wife used to say, you've got
to taste everything? What she used to say? Thank you? No,
thank you? Hoping. She's a great woman, a great, great,
great woman. Is there anything you haven't talked about or
told anybody about the war that you want to make sure?
(05:31):
I know? Remember I told you I didn't talk about
seventy years my wife went to her grave never know.
How do you feel about that? I should have told her?
What do you think would have been different had you
told her? I should have told her. I really should
have Why because she was my partner and everything that
(05:55):
we did, she wasn't only my wife, she was my friend.
We went to kindergarten the other that's how long I know?
And you were married for how long? Fifty seven years? Lifetime?
It's got six years MS every day. Thanks to Richard
(06:21):
Davida for sharing some family photos with us, which you
can see at Service podcast dot org. Next, we have
Ray about well and Navy cook stationed in New Jersey
towards the end of the war. His episode Navy Cooking
at finished with us sharing that at Ray just opened
(06:43):
a new bakery, raised Boozy cupcakes in Vorches, New Jersey.
For his interview, engineer Steve Lubetkin sat with him in
the bakery kitchen while we spoke via video. I got
married quite young. I was only I was going with
a girl in Connecticut. I went with her for two years.
(07:03):
But when I met my wife, I knew that she
was really the one. She had the same background. She
had done a farm, she had a large family, she
had gone to the same sort of hardships that I
had gone through in the Depression, and I just knew
that this person would go along with what I've planned
in life, so I married her. My wife was born
(07:26):
with a congenial deformity. Her left hip and her left
leg was two and a half inches shorter. Her whole
hip in Pelvis was small on one side, and she
wore her lift on her shoe, which she didn't get
until she got old enough to buy her own shoes.
I don't know why, because her father made good money,
but for some reason they did not get her corrective shoes,
(07:50):
and she didn't get them until she was twenty one,
so she had problems with her back when she got older.
But I never considered her handicap because she was deter
him in person. She did everything she wanted to do.
She rollerskated. She was a great roller skater. That's where
I met her on the roller skates in then his
landing during the war on Lead. In fact, she had
(08:14):
five sisters. All of her sisters but one that's where
they met their husband was on a roller skating rank.
We decided we wouldn't get married until the war ended.
She worked in a cold factor. She made woolen army coach.
She's so delining in the overcoats. We got married on
(08:35):
twenty four February in n and we opened up a
bakery in nineteen seventy two on our anniversary. It was
quite exciting. I bought a business that was already established.
I just walked into a business that was operating. I
knew I was going to do better, and I did.
(08:55):
We did a lot of minutes of French space trees.
Petty Four's cook was a big thing and who I
specialized in cakes. We had that bakery for eighteen years.
We opened the doors on anniversary. We were married for
sixty six years. Because of Rosanna's disability, they were only
(09:20):
able to have one child, a daughter they named Rosanna.
She shared some photos of her parents, and there's one
I particularly love. Ray's looking into the camera with a
big smile on his face while flattening dough with a
massive rolling pin. A toddling Rosanna sits on the counter
looking back at mom Rosanna, who seems caught mid laugh.
(09:43):
You can see the plan Ray head in life lived
out in that flower covered moment. Check it out on
our Instagram and Facebook. We're at Service podcast. We'll be
right back with more. M oh ah boy, see I
(10:24):
forget one. Oh boy, he's telling me Welcome back to service.
Veteran stories of hunger and war from My Heart Radio.
I spoke on the phone with John Bastrica in Youngstown, Ohio,
while engineer Junie Ramikins sat in the room with John
and his son Joe. John was in the Army's first Division,
the troops that stormed the Normandy Beaches on D Day
(10:47):
and the men we think of when we picture that
gigantic battle. In his episode, I came off in waste
deep water. We heard how hard it was for him
to make it past that beach, and why he had
no food or a blanket his first night off of it.
John seemed particularly frustrated at memories. He couldn't smoothly pull
(11:08):
together like the battle that gave him his war wounds.
But when it came to his wife, and he remembered
her with perfection. So as we were waiting there, sitting
on and the tank, what was her name? And Marie mystic?
Do you remember when you first met her? At my
(11:29):
birthday party? Webb four or five years old. Her mother
and my mother and my grandfather and grandmother, they all
got together and all knew of each other and what
was going on, and they made sure that she got
invited to a birthday party. They used the center by
a bringer. Other sister up the bringer up, and that's
(11:52):
how I met her. So the families were more or
less tied together. I stayed with her when I went
to school, and every time we come home from school,
when you got down the field and play ball, because
that's where the recreation area was, we played tennis and baseball,
paddle tennis, and the whole neighborhood and gang used to
be and we helped clean up the ball field. She
(12:16):
became a registered nurse. She was the registered nurse at
the hospital. She was strictly business when you talked to
her at the hospital. When I had time, I used
to pick her up and take her down to the hospital,
or pick her up at nighttime when she worked three
eleven turn. Yes, I got buried in forty seven after
the war. If I come home. How long were you married? For?
(12:39):
Sixty seven years? Wow? She died seven years ago and
I got the last letter I wrote her before I
went overseas. It's somewhere in the roar. After our interview,
Joe sent us that letter, dated November nine. Dearest Anne, Well,
(13:06):
the time is probably near when we leave. I have
no idea or where we go. I don't know, and
I am not worried over it. I have so much
to say, yet can find no words by which to
explain myself, So I'll just say a few lines. A
fellow never thinks of what's before him until it gets near.
(13:28):
Then his mind goes back to those at home, the
way they are enjoying life, and how they entertain themselves.
His mind drifts back to the people that waived him
goodbye and wished him the best of luck. The more
he thinks, the more he sees what went on when
he had left. But he can't go back to all
that happened. So he starts to realize what he left
(13:50):
home for, but his mind goes to a complete blank.
Then it lightens back to the past. There he sees
the times he with his girlfriend. He sees them together,
their pleasures and fun, their quarrels and misunderstanding, and everything
else that he now can't put two words as he writes.
(14:12):
He sees her working the night turn and the nursery ward.
While she works, she is also thinking of other things.
He sees those parts and more and realizes that they
are all past memories which never return again. So he
thinks of the future things to come when he comes back.
So all that he can say until that time comes,
(14:34):
whenever it comes, is that he loves the girl he
left that Sunday night when he was home on furlough.
He knows he won't be home again until it is over.
Over there, he hopes to come back safe and sound.
He praised that the time is soon, which he thinks
will be in June. That is about the time you
(14:55):
will become a graduate nurse and will be capable of
performing as a true angel of mercy. So until that time,
I won't say a goodbye, though since that Sunday night
we left each other, many have been goodbye. I'll just
say so long and dear, I love you and always
will until we meet again in the near future. I'm
(15:17):
saying so long. Welcome back to service from my Heart Radio.
(15:49):
Our last lasting love story comes from Norm Reuben, one
hundred year old career marine from Spokane, Washington. Norm's episode
is upcoming and we spoke via video with engineer Steve
Jackson in the room. Norm enlisted at seventeen years old
in nineteen thirty seven. Becoming a marine was a way
(16:10):
to get paid and clothed and take one hungry mouth
away from his mother's table during the Great Depression. He
didn't know that he was going to have to fight
in a war. His love story started pouring out when
I asked him what he was doing eight years later,
the day of the Japanese finally surrendered in August of
nineteen after he traveled the world and stormed islands in
(16:33):
the Pacific, I was sitting on Guam getting ready to
go into Japan. When it happened, all I could think of,
could I get a phone call to my wife, Marjorie
and talked to her. She had put up with me
(16:57):
through the war. She was a beautiful, a wonderful, full
blooded nurse from the Women's Hospital Philadelphia. I went to
the phone and I said, I'd like to just call
one number and see if I can get hold of Marjorie.
And I did. It was just ecstatic for me to
(17:19):
be able to talk to her, and they had to
pull a phone away from my ear. She was the
most wonderful person I've ever known, and I married her family.
Marjorie was raised with four girls. Her father died when
(17:40):
she was young, and her mother went to work and
raised those four girls and they all went to school.
Her mother was the greatest mother. I just absolutely loved her,
just like a mother. I didn't know until after we
(18:00):
were married that Marjorie had been selected to go to
Hanneman General Hospital. They had a three year program for
registered nurses to become doctors, but she never told me
about it until we were stationed a Guantaco, Virginia together
(18:21):
when I was teaching school. That hurt me bad. She
could have been a great doctor for the Navy. Oh
my yes. I came back from Iceland in forty one
and asked her to marry me, and she did, and
she gave up her scholarship to study medicine as a
(18:43):
doctor to marry me. She was the greatest I've ever known.
I missed her when she wasn't close, and there was
a lot of times when I was out on an
island or all maneuvers, or even just being a camp
pendleton for two weeks out in the field. I was
(19:03):
so happy to get home to watch her smile and
just say welcome home norm when I could. We always
celebrated holidays together, especially Christmas. She loved Christmas. Christmas dinner
was always Thanksgiving dinner with a ham and we would
(19:29):
have Marind's in and she would serve them just like.
I was still in the Marine Corps corps for twenty
four years. How long were you married for? I was
going to say seventy two years. That's about right. She
(19:49):
was never going to get away from me. After I
got out of the Marine Court. We lived together very well.
She made a beaut a full home for me, and
she was a beautiful mother that raised a really fine
young man. It was just the most wonderful, wonderful life
(20:12):
I had with a wonderful, wonderful bride that I loved
very deeply. And as for my grandparents, a few years
ago I interviewed them separately about what sixty nine years
of marriage then had taught them about lasting love. Here's
(20:33):
a little of what they said. I don't know if
any of us are going to get to sixty nine
years of marriage. Some of us are already out. So
what is your number one bit of advice? Love? The
family is going to get back together. This is what
(20:55):
is binding this country. It's made it so great. The
family is being destroyed at a discipline of families, and
the kids are not learning. All you got now is pushbuttons.
You see, everybody's walking nothings to their playing with these
damned things. Conversation, when do you get a person to
(21:17):
talk to? I don't think they exist anymore. Well, how
about advice for people who are married? What about your marriage?
Would you say has helped you last for sixty nine years?
And my marriage lasting for that long? Because I think
I was damned stomached, That's what it is. No, I
made up my mind when I got married, and was
it we were brought up. If it don't work, you
(21:40):
get out. There's no second marriage like today, there's no deep,
deep feelings for another person's feelings. All they think of
is their own little self selfishness. I guess you would
call it. What has sixty nine years of marriage taught
you about love? Caring? Deep caring? And that's what I
(22:00):
stought sharing. And if you care for someone you don't
want to hurt them, you want to hurt something, then
I don't think it's really love. But love is caring
for someone else and not wanting to hurt them. Thell
me that's love. What advice about marriage do you want
(22:22):
to pass on? We have only God and whoever helps
us when we get old. Have patience with each other.
Hope you out with your weaknesses, because you're both weak
and you're both strong. So when you're weak, discuss it,
help each other. Should have to yell each other, but
once in a while and then and I yell each
other mostly because the poor girl is getting different. She's
(22:44):
too proud to admit it. And sometimes she says, I
can't hear you. I speak a little out of She says,
don't yell. So I'm in between the hot rock and
a place where you know. I wouldn't have it any
other way. I couldn't live without, and I try the future.
I really dread the future when one of us is gone.
(23:12):
M You can see photos from these veteran couples, John's letter,
a link to the Love Bites radio episode featuring those
interviews with my grandparents and more at Service podcast dot
org and on Instagram and Facebook. We are at Service
podcast Service as a production of I Heart Radio, where
(23:34):
Gabrielle Collins is our supervising producer and Christopher hasiotis our
executive producer. I produced and engineered this episode with help
from all of those engineers and Misty Boddiker. Thanks for listening,
subscribing to, and dropping a review of Service on your
favorite platform, and thank you to those serving, those who
have served, and those who love them. Um m m
(24:12):
m
You're tuning into service, Johnny, the strict private first class
that are in stories of hunger and war. They joined
the service. Remember Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor, a production from
My Heart Radio. We used to just give these people
the food from my miss Kits. You ain't what you
could get, and be thankful well what you will get
(00:23):
In I'm your host, Jacqueline Raposo, before peeling potatoes, he
told me that he spent the war peeling potatoes in
the bottom of the chew peel potatos in BA. I
think she was talking about the guy she's been dating
(00:44):
you and you can't go out And Georgia, that's me
at the kitchen table with my grandparents, Pat and Fancy
d Ambrosio from our first episode. They were married for
seventy years before my Nana passed away last April. And
as I've and spending a lot of time with our
World War Two veterans since, I've noticed something every single
(01:08):
one of them shared with me. A love story, A
big love story, one that outlasted the Great Depression and
the draft and trains and ships and machine gun bullets
and the divorce rates that spiked immediately after the War
one that lasted and outlasted, and is so ingrained in
(01:30):
their hearts and minds that their love stories spilled out
even when other memories of combat or cuisine failed them.
As we spoke, if you've listened through a good number
of our service stories, you might have been wondering where
are the women. It's a good question, and love and
service are related. Here. We'll hear about women's direct contributions
(01:54):
to the Allied cause in an episode with an army
nurse we have coming up. But by fewer than twenty
four percent of married women were working outside of the home.
Because let's remember that this was a time before packaged
foods and microwaves and washing machines and ready made clothes.
Families made much of what they consumed, and that work
(02:16):
fell to the women, and so when it comes to service,
that is largely where we find them, canning vegetables, sending
v mail packages, rolling bandages, sewing in factories, nursing in hospitals,
and waiting to be wives until their boys came home.
We're going to hear about a few of these women
(02:38):
by revisiting some of their veterans love stories, sharing them
simply and unadorned. We start with Dorothy and Frank Da Vita.
In her husband's episode Why Am I Alive? Frank shared
how he spent almost three years aboard a Coast Guard
ship transporting Army troops to the Normandy beaches on D Day,
(02:59):
supplying the Allies with food in Scotland, and stealing steaks
from the officers to grow up in his gunnery shack.
I met Frank and his youngest son, Richard, at Frank's
home in New Jersey. Dot was present everywhere, in the
cornucopia of photos on their mantle and in the cookbook
that Richard placed in my lap. Here a little of
(03:21):
their story. Yeah, I love my mom, I love my family,
very family. Ore. You know Italians are I said that
you gotta have the veal covers Sudday. You have to
have the post right otherwise you're not a day. I
gotta admit my mom was not the greatest cook. How
(03:42):
did that fish on Friday? And she didn't know how
to cook fish? Really, so I never liked fish. Then
when I got married to my wife, she knew how
to cook fish, and for the first time in my
life I liked fish. And when did you get married?
I got married my wife was the best cook. I
was never born, tell me about it. She was to
see and Nodan Sicily was conquered by everybody. So they
(04:06):
have a conglamorration of different ethnic foods, and she knew
all about those. My mother was no ladan. So she
used to make homemade pasta, the long pasta. She put
a stick on one chip to the other year, and
on the sticks she would wrap the pasta. So some guy,
I don't want to swer any names, he came in
the door, like thunderbolt, you knocked the old the pasta?
(04:29):
Who was that? How old? That's twelve years old? That?
How much cooking did you do while you were married?
I never cooked. I didn't have to boil water. She
used to have a lot of recipes, and this because
when they said, uh, why don't you write them down?
So she wrote them all down. And my grandson and
(04:49):
a lot of couple of people put in the book
for him some great recipes in it. Through this book,
now I became a cook. What are you cooking that?
You're like, Oh, yeah, I got that. I make a
great pizza, make the dough to make the model. Others
put the soldiers on. So I became a cook only
through this book? What does food mean to you? Everything?
(05:09):
I'm Talian? You know the times the only people are
they reading, they're talking about food. Right. You go to
somebody's house, the first thing you say, are you angry?
What's something? And my wife used to say, you've got
to taste everything? What she used to say? Thank you? No,
thank you? Hoping. She's a great woman, a great, great,
great woman. Is there anything you haven't talked about or
told anybody about the war that you want to make sure?
(05:31):
I know? Remember I told you I didn't talk about
seventy years my wife went to her grave never know.
How do you feel about that? I should have told her?
What do you think would have been different had you
told her? I should have told her. I really should
have Why because she was my partner and everything that
(05:55):
we did, she wasn't only my wife, she was my friend.
We went to kindergarten the other that's how long I know?
And you were married for how long? Fifty seven years? Lifetime?
It's got six years MS every day. Thanks to Richard
(06:21):
Davida for sharing some family photos with us, which you
can see at Service podcast dot org. Next, we have
Ray about well and Navy cook stationed in New Jersey
towards the end of the war. His episode Navy Cooking
at finished with us sharing that at Ray just opened
(06:43):
a new bakery, raised Boozy cupcakes in Vorches, New Jersey.
For his interview, engineer Steve Lubetkin sat with him in
the bakery kitchen while we spoke via video. I got
married quite young. I was only I was going with
a girl in Connecticut. I went with her for two years.
(07:03):
But when I met my wife, I knew that she
was really the one. She had the same background. She
had done a farm, she had a large family, she
had gone to the same sort of hardships that I
had gone through in the Depression, and I just knew
that this person would go along with what I've planned
in life, so I married her. My wife was born
(07:26):
with a congenial deformity. Her left hip and her left
leg was two and a half inches shorter. Her whole
hip in Pelvis was small on one side, and she
wore her lift on her shoe, which she didn't get
until she got old enough to buy her own shoes.
I don't know why, because her father made good money,
but for some reason they did not get her corrective shoes,
(07:50):
and she didn't get them until she was twenty one,
so she had problems with her back when she got older.
But I never considered her handicap because she was deter
him in person. She did everything she wanted to do.
She rollerskated. She was a great roller skater. That's where
I met her on the roller skates in then his
landing during the war on Lead. In fact, she had
(08:14):
five sisters. All of her sisters but one that's where
they met their husband was on a roller skating rank.
We decided we wouldn't get married until the war ended.
She worked in a cold factor. She made woolen army coach.
She's so delining in the overcoats. We got married on
(08:35):
twenty four February in n and we opened up a
bakery in nineteen seventy two on our anniversary. It was
quite exciting. I bought a business that was already established.
I just walked into a business that was operating. I
knew I was going to do better, and I did.
(08:55):
We did a lot of minutes of French space trees.
Petty Four's cook was a big thing and who I
specialized in cakes. We had that bakery for eighteen years.
We opened the doors on anniversary. We were married for
sixty six years. Because of Rosanna's disability, they were only
(09:20):
able to have one child, a daughter they named Rosanna.
She shared some photos of her parents, and there's one
I particularly love. Ray's looking into the camera with a
big smile on his face while flattening dough with a
massive rolling pin. A toddling Rosanna sits on the counter
looking back at mom Rosanna, who seems caught mid laugh.
(09:43):
You can see the plan Ray head in life lived
out in that flower covered moment. Check it out on
our Instagram and Facebook. We're at Service podcast. We'll be
right back with more. M oh ah boy, see I
(10:24):
forget one. Oh boy, he's telling me Welcome back to service.
Veteran stories of hunger and war from My Heart Radio.
I spoke on the phone with John Bastrica in Youngstown, Ohio,
while engineer Junie Ramikins sat in the room with John
and his son Joe. John was in the Army's first Division,
the troops that stormed the Normandy Beaches on D Day
(10:47):
and the men we think of when we picture that
gigantic battle. In his episode, I came off in waste
deep water. We heard how hard it was for him
to make it past that beach, and why he had
no food or a blanket his first night off of it.
John seemed particularly frustrated at memories. He couldn't smoothly pull
(11:08):
together like the battle that gave him his war wounds.
But when it came to his wife, and he remembered
her with perfection. So as we were waiting there, sitting
on and the tank, what was her name? And Marie mystic?
Do you remember when you first met her? At my
(11:29):
birthday party? Webb four or five years old. Her mother
and my mother and my grandfather and grandmother, they all
got together and all knew of each other and what
was going on, and they made sure that she got
invited to a birthday party. They used the center by
a bringer. Other sister up the bringer up, and that's
(11:52):
how I met her. So the families were more or
less tied together. I stayed with her when I went
to school, and every time we come home from school,
when you got down the field and play ball, because
that's where the recreation area was, we played tennis and baseball,
paddle tennis, and the whole neighborhood and gang used to
be and we helped clean up the ball field. She
(12:16):
became a registered nurse. She was the registered nurse at
the hospital. She was strictly business when you talked to
her at the hospital. When I had time, I used
to pick her up and take her down to the hospital,
or pick her up at nighttime when she worked three
eleven turn. Yes, I got buried in forty seven after
the war. If I come home. How long were you married? For?
(12:39):
Sixty seven years? Wow? She died seven years ago and
I got the last letter I wrote her before I
went overseas. It's somewhere in the roar. After our interview,
Joe sent us that letter, dated November nine. Dearest Anne, Well,
(13:06):
the time is probably near when we leave. I have
no idea or where we go. I don't know, and
I am not worried over it. I have so much
to say, yet can find no words by which to
explain myself, So I'll just say a few lines. A
fellow never thinks of what's before him until it gets near.
(13:28):
Then his mind goes back to those at home, the
way they are enjoying life, and how they entertain themselves.
His mind drifts back to the people that waived him
goodbye and wished him the best of luck. The more
he thinks, the more he sees what went on when
he had left. But he can't go back to all
that happened. So he starts to realize what he left
(13:50):
home for, but his mind goes to a complete blank.
Then it lightens back to the past. There he sees
the times he with his girlfriend. He sees them together,
their pleasures and fun, their quarrels and misunderstanding, and everything
else that he now can't put two words as he writes.
(14:12):
He sees her working the night turn and the nursery ward.
While she works, she is also thinking of other things.
He sees those parts and more and realizes that they
are all past memories which never return again. So he
thinks of the future things to come when he comes back.
So all that he can say until that time comes,
(14:34):
whenever it comes, is that he loves the girl he
left that Sunday night when he was home on furlough.
He knows he won't be home again until it is over.
Over there, he hopes to come back safe and sound.
He praised that the time is soon, which he thinks
will be in June. That is about the time you
(14:55):
will become a graduate nurse and will be capable of
performing as a true angel of mercy. So until that time,
I won't say a goodbye, though since that Sunday night
we left each other, many have been goodbye. I'll just
say so long and dear, I love you and always
will until we meet again in the near future. I'm
(15:17):
saying so long. Welcome back to service from my Heart Radio.
(15:49):
Our last lasting love story comes from Norm Reuben, one
hundred year old career marine from Spokane, Washington. Norm's episode
is upcoming and we spoke via video with engineer Steve
Jackson in the room. Norm enlisted at seventeen years old
in nineteen thirty seven. Becoming a marine was a way
(16:10):
to get paid and clothed and take one hungry mouth
away from his mother's table during the Great Depression. He
didn't know that he was going to have to fight
in a war. His love story started pouring out when
I asked him what he was doing eight years later,
the day of the Japanese finally surrendered in August of
nineteen after he traveled the world and stormed islands in
(16:33):
the Pacific, I was sitting on Guam getting ready to
go into Japan. When it happened, all I could think of,
could I get a phone call to my wife, Marjorie
and talked to her. She had put up with me
(16:57):
through the war. She was a beautiful, a wonderful, full
blooded nurse from the Women's Hospital Philadelphia. I went to
the phone and I said, I'd like to just call
one number and see if I can get hold of Marjorie.
And I did. It was just ecstatic for me to
(17:19):
be able to talk to her, and they had to
pull a phone away from my ear. She was the
most wonderful person I've ever known, and I married her family.
Marjorie was raised with four girls. Her father died when
(17:40):
she was young, and her mother went to work and
raised those four girls and they all went to school.
Her mother was the greatest mother. I just absolutely loved her,
just like a mother. I didn't know until after we
(18:00):
were married that Marjorie had been selected to go to
Hanneman General Hospital. They had a three year program for
registered nurses to become doctors, but she never told me
about it until we were stationed a Guantaco, Virginia together
(18:21):
when I was teaching school. That hurt me bad. She
could have been a great doctor for the Navy. Oh
my yes. I came back from Iceland in forty one
and asked her to marry me, and she did, and
she gave up her scholarship to study medicine as a
(18:43):
doctor to marry me. She was the greatest I've ever known.
I missed her when she wasn't close, and there was
a lot of times when I was out on an
island or all maneuvers, or even just being a camp
pendleton for two weeks out in the field. I was
(19:03):
so happy to get home to watch her smile and
just say welcome home norm when I could. We always
celebrated holidays together, especially Christmas. She loved Christmas. Christmas dinner
was always Thanksgiving dinner with a ham and we would
(19:29):
have Marind's in and she would serve them just like.
I was still in the Marine Corps corps for twenty
four years. How long were you married for? I was
going to say seventy two years. That's about right. She
(19:49):
was never going to get away from me. After I
got out of the Marine Court. We lived together very well.
She made a beaut a full home for me, and
she was a beautiful mother that raised a really fine
young man. It was just the most wonderful, wonderful life
(20:12):
I had with a wonderful, wonderful bride that I loved
very deeply. And as for my grandparents, a few years
ago I interviewed them separately about what sixty nine years
of marriage then had taught them about lasting love. Here's
(20:33):
a little of what they said. I don't know if
any of us are going to get to sixty nine
years of marriage. Some of us are already out. So
what is your number one bit of advice? Love? The
family is going to get back together. This is what
(20:55):
is binding this country. It's made it so great. The
family is being destroyed at a discipline of families, and
the kids are not learning. All you got now is pushbuttons.
You see, everybody's walking nothings to their playing with these
damned things. Conversation, when do you get a person to
(21:17):
talk to? I don't think they exist anymore. Well, how
about advice for people who are married? What about your marriage?
Would you say has helped you last for sixty nine years?
And my marriage lasting for that long? Because I think
I was damned stomached, That's what it is. No, I
made up my mind when I got married, and was
it we were brought up. If it don't work, you
(21:40):
get out. There's no second marriage like today, there's no deep,
deep feelings for another person's feelings. All they think of
is their own little self selfishness. I guess you would
call it. What has sixty nine years of marriage taught
you about love? Caring? Deep caring? And that's what I
(22:00):
stought sharing. And if you care for someone you don't
want to hurt them, you want to hurt something, then
I don't think it's really love. But love is caring
for someone else and not wanting to hurt them. Thell
me that's love. What advice about marriage do you want
(22:22):
to pass on? We have only God and whoever helps
us when we get old. Have patience with each other.
Hope you out with your weaknesses, because you're both weak
and you're both strong. So when you're weak, discuss it,
help each other. Should have to yell each other, but
once in a while and then and I yell each
other mostly because the poor girl is getting different. She's
(22:44):
too proud to admit it. And sometimes she says, I
can't hear you. I speak a little out of She says,
don't yell. So I'm in between the hot rock and
a place where you know. I wouldn't have it any
other way. I couldn't live without, and I try the future.
I really dread the future when one of us is gone.
(23:12):
M You can see photos from these veteran couples, John's letter,
a link to the Love Bites radio episode featuring those
interviews with my grandparents and more at Service podcast dot
org and on Instagram and Facebook. We are at Service
podcast Service as a production of I Heart Radio, where
(23:34):
Gabrielle Collins is our supervising producer and Christopher hasiotis our
executive producer. I produced and engineered this episode with help
from all of those engineers and Misty Boddiker. Thanks for listening,
subscribing to, and dropping a review of Service on your
favorite platform, and thank you to those serving, those who
have served, and those who love them. Um m m
(24:12):
m
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