Stories from Bob's Life

In the fall of 1979, I had been seeing Mary Anne for nearly two and a half years.  At that point, she was 30 and I was 27. She had dated and had longer term relationships with quite a few more men than I had had with women and was more experienced and mature. I was, in the world of longer term relationships, fairly wet behind the ears. She patiently mentored me – for a while

We had discussed marriage – and she was pretty sure I was the guy she wanted to marry.  She had been with enough guys to know (believe)  that in spite oI my youth and flaws, I had something she liked and wanted to stay with.  I liked and loved her, but hadn’t played the field much and wasn’t ready to commit and take the step she was.  I had a couple of times said yes, and then backed down to “I’m not ready yet.”  She was frustrated, but hung in there.

In the fall of 1979 I had decided to get out of the Navy.  I was unimpressed with the leadership I’d seen and didn’t aspire to follow in the footsteps of leaders who had not impressed me.  So I was going to leave the Navy and head back to California, apply for graduate school at Berkeley and see what happened.  I hadn’t thought it through much more than that.  So I was a platoon commander at SEAL Team TWO and submitted my letter of resignation just before  departing on a 4 month deployment to Europe to train with our counterparts a a multitude of countries.  Though I had not made this a secret with my peers, my CO, then-LCDR Tommy Lawson, was surprised, not impressed, and a bit angry.    But there was not much he could do at that point.   So I deployed with my SEAL Platoon to Europe for 4 months.

Mary had just gotten out of the Navy after 6 years of service – at that point there weren’t a lot of options for women in the Navy.  Having  decided that what the Navy offered wasn’t for her, she went back home in Brooklyn to consider her next step, and was trying out being a dance therapist at Antioch University in Keene, New Hampshire.  Given that I was unwilling to commit, and I’d told her that after the deployment, my plan was to head west to pursue my destiny and hadn’t mentioned her accompanying me or including her in that dream, she’d given up on me as a long term partner and was using my absence for 4 months to break the bond and move on.  So she was seeing other guys and not responding to my letters, except occasionally sending a card, which, though I suspected something was not right, I was pretty busy leading and managing my platoon, travelling all over Europe, training with our Greek, Belgian, German, Tunisian, Spanish counterparts.

While training with the Belgians we were put up in the attic of an old castle.  I recall one night when all were asleep, I stayed up with a sort of flashlight I had, and decided to give some time to facing the big question mark I was facing when I got back from deployment. What did I want to do instead of this?  I decided to write down a number of things I wanted to be able to say about myself when I was 40 – about 13 years hence.  I don’t have that list, (wish I did) but I remember a few things I wrote down, which indeed supports the thesis “write it down, make it happen.”    I recall that I wanted to be married and have children. And I wanted to have lived and worked in Europe – since I’d so thoroughly enjoyed studying in Germany while in college, and was comfortable with the language.   I’m sure there were other things on the list, but those things stuck with me –

After leaving Belgium, our next training window was with the German Kampfschwimmer Kompanie on the Baltic Sea in Eckernfoerde Germany.  When I arrived there, the Germans were impressed that I was pretty comfortable in German – not quite fluent, but very conversant.   Lt Mark Golay, the then current US SEAL Exchange Officer with the Kampfschwimmers, informed me that the officer who had been scheduled to relieve him in 6 months had decided to leave the SEAL Teams and wouldn’t be relieving him.  The detailer was in a quandary, since it took a full year to identify and screen an officer, send him to complete language school and get him to Germany for a contact relief. That did not suit Mark well at all, since after nearly two years, he was very ready to leave and get back to the SEAL teams and get on with his career.  So seeing that I already spoke  German pretty well, and had no other plans after the deployment, he put the sales pitch on me.

I was an easy mark.  I liked what I saw in the Kampfschwimmers and in Eckernfoerde – it was a very appealing option.  I could put a check in the “live and work in Europe” box and get out of the Navy later. So I agreed to withdraw my resignation if I could be assigned to relieve Mark and his wife Patty in Eckernfoerde.  Also, I got along well with the Kampfschwimmers –  I liked them, they liked me and so it appeared to be a slam-dunk great opportunity – especially since I had no other real plans.  The CO of SEAL Team Two, Tom Lawson, still angry that I had submitted my resignation, didn’t support my plan, but his OPs Officer LCDR Bill Shepherd had previously been my platoon commander, we had gotten along well and he very much supported keeping me in the Navy.  In spite of Lawson’s admonition to him against supporting my desire to withdraw, Bill made the calls to the detailer to help me withdraw my resignation and be assigned to that billet in Germany to relieve Mark Golay.   Tom Lawson chewed his ass about that, but Bill knew it was the right thing to do – for Bill Shepherd, Lawson’s ass chewing was like water off a duck’s back.

The one issue that concerned me however was that I realized that choosing to take the Kampfschwimmer Kompanie billet forced an all-or-nothing decision in my relationship with Mary Anne.  She had become my best friend and lover, and the idea of simply leaping on this opportunity and writing her off just didn’t feel right – on many levels.   So I gave it some thought and decided I really did want to stay with her, and it was time to make the commitment. (My SEAL buddies said, “NO! NO! You definitely want to be single in Germany – you’d be a kid in a candy store!”)  I asked Mark Golay if I could call Mary Anne from his home and discuss it with her, which I did.  I recall telling her that this position in Eckernfoerde was available to me, and I had agreed to accept it and move to Germany. She responded that she was very happy for me, as she knew that this fit what I had wanted to do and I would be happy.  Then I dropped the bomb on her –  I then told her I wanted her to marry me and come with me.  Silence.   “I don’t think so” she replied – “that is your dream not mine.”

I’m not sure how the conversation went after that but I know that as convincingly as I knew how, I made the case for how beautiful and quaint Eckernfoerde was, how she didn’t have any real plans either, and this would be a great way to begin our marriage, and we both knew how well we got along and how much we enjoyed being together. This would be the beginning of our living “happily ever after.”  Even though overseas calls were very expensive in 1979  it took an additional two or three long phone calls to get her to agree, (I believe I wrote a check to Mark for $500 – pretty big money back then)   Indeed she made me beg!   The plan was that we’d get married as soon as possible after I returned in late November (not having seen each other for 4 months), then head out to Monterey for 2 months in Language School – to provide a refresher for me, and build a foundation for her.  We’d then do our move to arrive in Eckernfoerde in April 1980 to relieve Mark and Patty Golay and begin our tour.

It wasn’t quite over. When I got back to the states, I was very busy with post-deployment briefings and reports, writing evaluations on my men etc.  We’d had a few things go wrong that required some extra work – my platoon chief Butch White had fallen off a balcony in a hotel in Tunisia and had been sent back to the states with a broken back.  My Assistant Platoon officer Slater Blackiston had been hospitalized in Eckernfoerde with a huge hematoma from doing cast and recovery with a rope vice a rubber sling.  And a few other issues. I had quite a bit of admin to do and was fully engaged with it, in order to get ready to check out, get married and then head across country.

Then I got a phone call at work from Mary Anne, telling me that she had changed her mind and didn’t want to go thru with the marriage.  Diane, one of her closest friends who had never cared for me, convinced Mary Anne that I was full of “false bravado” – and wouldn’t be a good fit for her – much less to run off to Europe with.  Of course, Diane had additional negatives on me that convinced an uncertain Mary Anne that this was not a good idea.  Mary called me at work and gave me the news.  I told her I was too busy to discuss it with her then, that I’d call her back that evening.

I vaguely recall going to the club after work that day with some friends, having a couple of beers, then going back to my apartment at the beach in Virginia Beach and calling Mary Anne. I wasn’t nervous (liquid courage) but I recall being amazed at how confidently I laid out all the reasons why this WAS a good idea and that she’d be making a big mistake pulling out of it.  At the end of the conversation, I guess my arguments won out over Diane’s, and she agreed to stick with the plan.

Just a few weeks later we reconnected in Washington DC for the rituals associated with getting married and starting our life together.

That ALSO was a bit more complicated than it might have been. I had been married before – and divorced – with my girl friend from when I was a student in Germany (another story) who needed to be married in order to stay in the states.  Mary had grown up Catholic and her parents were devout practicing Catholics and having their eldest daughter marry a divorced man did not fit their religious temperament.  They knew however that Mary would do what she wanted, so acquiesced.  But they wanted the marriage sanctioned by the church, so Mary found priest who would perform the sanctioning rituals, which we went thru in a very small ceremony at a private home in the DC area. My father got off work to attend, even though he was very engaged in the planning for the mission to recover of American hostages in Tehran which became the Desert One tragedy.

Our wedding was scheduled for the Ft Myer chapel with a small group.  Partly because it was on relatively short notice – I’d just come back from a deployment and didn’t want to make a big deal or announce to the world that I was getting married.  In the teams that invites some pretty crazy hazing.  So an out-of-area wedding with a  small gathering of closest friends was optimal.  My parents lived nearby in DC while my father was stationed at the Pentagon, and Mary’s parents ruled out doing it in a Catholic church in Brooklyn because I had been married before and divorced – a big deal “no-no” in the Catholic church, and her parents were pretty staunch Catholics.  They didn’t like their eldest daughter marrying a crazy younger guy who’d been married before, but they agreed to attend the ceremony at the military Chapel on Ft Myer in Northern Virginia.

My parents were living on the Naval Observatory at the time and Mary and I stayed with them on the days before the wedding. We had a rehearsal dinner at the Army-Navy Country Club the night before,  which I barely recall, after which I went out on the town for my bachelor party to celebrate with my brother Scott, Mary’s brother Pat, my friend John Ford, and my father’s brother, my uncle Dutch.  We went to an Irish bar in DC and I (and I believe all of us) got very drunk.  I remember singing loudly along with an old Irish guy singing Danny Boy up on the stage.   My brother drove us home in my car, and the next day, I thanked him for driving, and he didn’t even recall that he did!  (Dodged that bullet)

The next morning, my wedding day, I woke up very hung over, and told myself I needed to pull myself together  – this was a big day.  I thought one thing that might help was going for a run. The Vice President’s quarters were also on the Naval Observatory and as I painfully ran some loops around the observatory that morning, I recall at one point passing Vice President Mondale out walking with several Secret Service guys.  All that the run did was intensify the hang over, thereby perhaps speeding up the recovery process.  I was ok but still not feeling very energetic when it came time to walk down the aisle. Mary Anne on the other hand, was in rare form.

As I recall, Mary’s sister Loretto was Mary’s Maid of Honor, and my brother Scott was my Best Man.  When we got to the alter, we went thru the standard rituals, but as we were asked to kneel, Mary lifted the hem of her dress to reveal the audience her calf-length socks with devils on them, which I didn’t see but got a good laugh from the audience.

When it was all over, we retreated to Diane and Bob Voslius’s house – Diane was one of Mary’s best friends and she’d agreed to host our small reception, even though she had strongly advised Mary Anne against  marrying me. At the reception in addition to our families were Jim Bullock, Ted and Judy Lyon? John Ford, Bill Shepherd?  my and Mary’s parents,  Who else?

Mary was relieved that the whole event was over and that it had gone pretty well. She was relaxed and very happy and was drinking champaign out of a beer mug.  Not very far into the evening, she wasn’t feeling well and I took her upstairs and held her over the toilet while she wretched and threw up for quite a while. I then put her to bed, and came down stairs where I found that most of my friends had left – and nearly everyone believed we had gone upstairs to consummate the marriage.  I only recall that the evening did not conclude romantically, but my Uncle Dutch had gifted us a night in a wedding suite the top floor of a nice hotel nearby, which is where we spent the next night before driving up to Brooklyn to spend Christmas with Mary’s family, and meet all the friends and relatives in that world.