The Box and The Letter

On August 1st, 1969, he was stationed at Utapao Royal Thai Air Force Base situated on the shore of Thailands western Gulf of Siam. They had met a little more than a year earlier when she was at a Rapid City, South Dakota bar with friends celebrating her 19th birthday. He was stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base near there and was 23. They had been married for two months.

That day, he wrote her a letter that went like this...

"I was recalling the time you and I built that dam at the cabin. I was really grooving on you that day and was thinking something like; If I am not already, I hope I fall in love with her because she is definitely the girl I'd love to marry. She's got warmth when you need it - Enthusiasm when you need it - Class when you need it - She's a hick when you need it - She's got insight when you want it - She's naive when it's nice to be that way and wise when it's necessary. There's more but I've run out of words. Nope - it's not the booze talking because I've just finished my first. 

Yours and Yours and Yours & still in Love With You,"

(When he returned from Thailand, they would spend their first year together at March Air Force Base, Riverside, California.  He would then be assigned to Thailand once again for a year in Udorn, Thailand. She would return home to Rapid City and while there, complete school as a Radiology Technician.  During those times, they would exchange dozens of letters and later cassette tapes. This note is an excerpt from one of those early letters.  Almost 57 years later, he would come across it among many others she had placed in a box for safe keeping. The box travelled with them through 9 moves over the next 15 years while they remained with the Air Force, finally settling in Sacramento, California in 1987.)