In the fall of 2000, I went to work for a fiber optics company in Seattle. Little did I know the job wasn’t about starting a new travel program for the company at all…it was the opportunity to meet a wonderful man, fall in love and experience a tiny slice of what it is like to be associated with those who proudly serve our country.
I met Curtis in the fall of 2000 when I joined 360networks where he was already employed as the systems administrator. I learned he had just retired from the Navy a few months earlier after a 21-year career, the kind of dedication which helped to explain why he was always the first one in the office and usually one of the last to leave at night! It wasn’t long before we were talking and laughing late into the evening after most of the office was empty and starting to discover things about each other as the relationship progressed.
But 360networks filed for bankruptcy less than a year after we met and we both lost our jobs. Times were rough for a systems administrator looking for work in “dot-bomb” Seattle. I was devastated far more for Curtis than myself, as he had never known the ups and downs of corporate life. He had only taken a few days off after his retirement from the Navy before coming to 360...and then lost his job just over a year later. He decided to return to school, focusing on database administration. I wasn’t much support for him while he negotiated the new waters of school and unemployment, as I was recovering from a serious car accident that happened about the same time we lost our jobs. But we stayed together and no one was more surprised than I when he proposed in December of 2002.
Curtis was offered a position as the systems administrator at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, where he had been stationed for most of his 21-year career in the Navy, as a civilian contractor. He commuted back and forth from the Seattle area to Oak Harbor for three months and we moved to Anacortes right after we married in May of 2003.
After settling into our new home, we drove over to NAS Whidbey to get my military ID (to which I was entitled as the spouse of a retired military officer) and the decal stickers for my car to allow me onto the base. I had never been closely associated with anyone serving in the military and I didn’t know what to expect as we drove onto the base. I was immediately overwhelmed as Curtis began to show me around the beautiful installation where he had spent so much time during his military career. Not only was the base situated on a gorgeous piece of land fronting on Puget Sound, but as I watched the men and women in uniform going about their work, I was suddenly struck by the magnitude of what these people did….for me and everyone I love. Though Curtis never knew, he had given me one of the best gifts of my life…the chance to see even a small part of what it means to serve. And to understand what he had lived for those 21 years.
But I really didn’t understand until I drove up to the guard station a few days later by myself. The guard checked my ID and as I started to drive past, to my total shock, he saluted. Me! Why? I was totally floored. Curtis wasn’t in the car…it was just me. And of course the first question I asked Curtis when I had been cleared into his office was “why in the world did he salute me?”
“Because you’re an officer’s wife,” Curtis replied. The little blue and white decal on the front left corner of my car’s windshield signified that this vehicle belonged to an officer of the United States Navy. And because I was his wife, I was afforded a sign of respect that meant more to me than anything I have encountered before or since.
Every time I drove onto NAS Whidbey, I was saluted. And every time, my throat swelled and tears sprang to my eyes. And even after the marriage failed, the salutes continued…even when I visited Mountain Home Air Force back home in Idaho. I still had base privileges for several months after our divorce was final and when I left NAS Whidbey for the last time, I could barely drive away, leaving the beautiful place where so many had served, not the least of which the man I had so loved, in large part, for that very service.
Those little blue and white stickers. My windshield became pitted, rock chips whittling away at my line of vision until finally, last winter, the windshield cracked all the way across. But still, I couldn’t bring myself to replace the windshield – those stickers were the very last vestige of the life I had shared with Curtis. Finally, just last month, it was time. I called the glass repair company and went outside to take a picture of those little pieces of my life. The man doing the work was so kind…he removed the stickers for me as I cried, but we could not remove them from the tape. So I transferred them to a piece of card stock and slipped them into a safe place. No more salutes, but forever a piece of a man I admired for his dedication, selflessness and commitment to his country. And the tears because he never knew how much it meant to me.
