Captured!

[Kpt. Lehmann]

I hope no one minds if I post this bit of news here. I'm most comfortable here in the SH3 forums because I spent so much time here before. I just wanted to share a little bit of my past and present with my friends that still ride the oceans here.

Twenty two years ago during my junior year in high school, I met a young lady that made me weak in the knees and made my heart race like no one else ever has since. (I was 17 years old and she was 16.)

We began to see each other as often as possible, though it was very little indeed by our standards.

You see, we were forbidden to date. Her parents hated me from the moment they found out that I was obligated to enter the Army at the end of my junior year. Her parents were peace protesters during the Vietnam war, and though I always treated them with respect and answered with "yes sir" or "no maam" they felt that their daughter had no future with me.. though NOT ONCE did we ever give them true reason to think badly of us.

We would still race to see each other between classes, and I'd walk her home from school every day... but even that was too much for her parents. They demanded that she "break up" with me... or they would not pay for her law school tuition.

Still we saw each other, but did our level best to not be seen together.

In private we had talked about running away together and getting married... and starting a family... but it wasn't to be.

When I entered the Army, we wrote each other every day... until one day the letters just stopped being answered.

When I was finally able to return home on leave, there was a "For Sale" sign infront of her house...

... and I lost all real hope of ever seeing her again. Their old phone number was disconnected... and we had no email... no text-messaging...

I wouldn't know it until last year, but we now believe that her mother had started to intercept the mail from both of us. During that time, her family picked up and moved to a new address... and I had no way of knowing.

"WE" had ceased to be... because we were hated for what we had.

As it turns out, she has been looking for me all this time, and says that she stopped just short of hiring a private investigator to determine my whereabouts... feeling that after all the time that had passed, it would be an invasion of privacy.

On October 23rd of last year, she found me on Facebook. (Friends had razzed me to death just weeks before about building a facebook account... and I had just done so to make them be quiet.)

Though we lived in cities more than 200 miles away from each other, we began to visit... and from the first meeting, it was as if twenty years simply hadn't happened. After all this time, it was as if it were only a single day.

Incredible odds against us. Decisions made for us so long ago... It seems to me that one's chances of winning the lottery are much better.

She is an attorney for Lubbock county now... and now I am a Paramedic in Lubbock after having moved there myself.

Today, I was finally able to get down on one knee infront of the courthouse main entrance and ask her to marry me.

She said yes...

... and after all these years, we can finally be together.

We will be married on October 23rd... one year to the day that we found each other again.

Her parents are talented grudge holders... and want nothing to do with our wedding next month...

... and though it hurts my now-fiance to be treated so badly by her parents... she tells me that WE are the ones who make decisions about our lives from here forward... and that they can be there with us... in support of us... or not at all.

... and I can think of NO ONE that I'd rather grow old with.

Some may wonder if they've found the "right one."

I know that I have.

Some things really are unbreakable... and it is UNREAL to me that this story is unfolding as it is today...

Thanks for letting me ramble guys.

I am truly, one of the luckiest men in the world.