| Love and War: or...... How I met my Wife |
| WELCOME! Many men met their wives while on active duty during WW II. We thought that in recognition of this common occurrence, we would set up a page devoted to those memories, so here we are! This page was suggested by my partner who was a member of the 91st Bomber Group in Bassingbourn, UK. I'll bet there are some great stories just waiting to be told, so let us hear from you. We also welcome the wives to send in the story from their perspective. (Think it will be the same? :-) ) Either way, we hope you enjoy this. Thanks for visiting! |
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| How I met My Wife I came to the San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center (now Lackland Air Force Base) from the 62nd College Training Detachment at the University Of Florida at Gainesville, Florida in September 1943. Our first action was to go through classification, where it was determined whether we would go on to pilot training or become bombardiers or navigators. I was fortunate to be selected for pilot training, and in early November we moved across the highway from the classification center to the Pre-flight school. Shortly after starting Pre-flight, we received our first twelve-hour pass to go into San Antonio. Two of my close friends, Walter Knapp and Harold Horry, and I decided that the easiest way to meet girls, would be to have a car. After all, we were nineteen year-old males, and we were the elite, we were Aviation Cadets. So we rented a 1941 Chevy Convertible. Shortly after picking up the car, we were driving along Travis Park and saw this delightful looking young lady walking along toward Houston Street. We pulled up alongside her and tried to start a conversation with her, but she just ignored us and continued to walk along. After flirting with her for a few minutes, she could no longer ignore us and she finally turned and told us that her Mother had told her not to talk to soldiers or strangers. I told her if she would tell us her name and we told her ours, we would no longer be strangers, and we were not soldiers, but Aviation Cadets. We asked her to come show us some of the sights of San Antonio, but she replied that she was on her lunch hour, that she worked at the Telephone Company and she certainly was not going to get in a car with three men she did not know. After some discussion, we elicited from her what her plans were for a Sunday when we knew we would have our next twelve-hour pass. She replied that she would be going to church. When we asked her what church, she responded that she would be attending Mass at St Gerard church. It so happened that all three of us fellows were Catholic, and so we showed up at 11:00 AM Mass at St Gerard church ten days later. The young lady, whose name was Betty Jane Carter, invited us to her home for lunch after Mass, where we were welcomed and treated to a delightful home-cooked meal. That afternoon the three of us joined by Betty Jane’s sister, Mary Ann, and a neighbor girl, named Rita Hofmeier, went to a movie at the Majestic Theatre in downtown San Antonio. I probably saw Betty another three or four times for lunch dates or for a movie and then I shipped out to Primary Flight training in El Reno, Oklahoma. We started a correspondence that was to go on for three years. I visited Betty in San Antonio after the war ended when I was on a ten-day delay-en-route from Ft Meyers, Florida to Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama. In January 1947, I moved from Pennsylvania, where I was born and lived until I entered the service, to San Antonio. Betty and I were married on November 22, 1947 and will celebrate our fifty-fifth wedding anniversary this year, 2002. We were blessed with six children and seventeen grand-children. The Rest of the Story In 2001, I decided to see if I could locate the two men who were with me the day that I met Betty. Using the Internet, I was able to locate two men with the names of Walter Knapp and Harold Horry. I wrote both of them and received a telephone call from Walter Knapp in just a few days. Betty and I had lunch with he and his wife in Kent, Ohio in August of 2001. We continue to exchange letters. The Harold Horry I located was the son of the Harold Horry I knew. Captain Harold Horry was killed in a B-47 crash in Kansas in 1957. Harold’s widow still lives in Kansas near where he was killed. I have talked to his son several times and exchanged e-mails with him. Because the accident report remains classified, the family has never learned any details of the accident that claimed Harold Horry’s life. Submitted by Merle L. Choffel |
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