18b Parade of Girls – Ginny

Parade of Girls – Ginny

When God’s time was ripe, I went to the Memorial Day picnic of the Servicemen’s Christian Center in CT, and there I met the love of my life, Virginia “Ginny” Elizabeth Shaw, who was 3 ½ years my younger, being born in Los Angeles CA on January 26, 1946.  I could only love her from afar, since we were both in the Navy, I as an officer pilot, and she as an enlisted Hospital Corpsman (WAVES), and fraternization was forbidden; besides, I was on a date with another girl.  However, that couldn’t hinder my praying for Ginny, which I did all that year, especially during my lonely times of deployment aboard Wasp.

Ginny was assigned to the Naval Hospital of Newport and living in quarters hospital side; she worked in the maternity ward and newborn nursery.  When I went with her to clean out her room, I might have been warned from the messy state of her closet (and later her mother’s house), but it was too late for me – I loved her with all my heart (more now than ever); moreover, she was a single-minded committed Christian, and beautiful (still is), and she became a great and faithful cook!

After becoming engaged to Ginny I built a wedding chest (5’ long x 2’ wide and high) for her that was a repeat of one I had made earlier, only better (but still not good enough, as time and climate would reveal).  I used rough cherry lumber that I bought from a dealer in Providence, and was allowed the use of the planer, saw, and joiner in the large woodworking shop at the Seabees’ Camp Fogarty in Exeter, through the kindness of two Marine friends.  I bought a sander (remember my name?), and covered both my BOQ rooms in fine dust (much to the displeasure of the BOQ manager), sanding the surfaces to smooth my mistakes.  The top I carved with our first names and a design of a cross growing from a heart, and Eph. 3:17; this was hinged to the box, and the chest was finished with a prop rod at the right and front push-button latch for a Lane cedar chest. The whole chest was lined with aromatic red cedar, glued, and had feet of cherry blocks on the corners; but was not varnished (as I never did varnish, paint, or any finish).

It was all very handsome, but unfortunately the sides and bottom warped and came apart through my ignorant design, which oriented the sides vertically, and didn’t account for the unsealed wood’s expansion from moisture.  I kept the carved top, thinking to somehow use it for our bed’s headboard (which never happened).

We began planning a wedding at her home church in MD, Glen Burnie Methodist Church, and her parents invited us to their home to get to know me and celebrate my birthday.  When on a walk I asked her dad for his permission to marry his daughter, which he gave; Ginny’s parents also arranged a shower/open house at their home.  After our initial plans (to marry at GBMC) fell through, we were wed at the Belleville Church on Wednesday night October 8, 1969, in lieu of the regular midweek prayer service.  We spent our first evening at our new (to us) home at 190 Waldron Avenue, North Kingstown, in the waterfront Hamilton community by Narragansett Bay; then we drove next day to Plymouth MA for a two day honeymoon, of which I spent the first morning in the driveway of our apartment (we rented an upstairs room) fixing a no-start ignition problem on my Volvo station wagon.  We toured Plymouth Rock (saw from afar Mayflower 2 on the water), Plimoth Plantation replica, a video museum, and the commercial village including a candy shop.

After a few more days at the Naval hospital in Newport, Ginny’s requested reassignment to the medical clinic at Quonset NAS was approved; this was much more convenient, as I drove her to and from work.  She looked so cute in her uniform with her garrison cap; I called her “my little duck”.

Soon after our marriage Ginny became pregnant with the first of our five children (we also hade two miscarriages).  In those days the services didn’t permit pregnant women, so she was soon discharged.  After four of our children had been born and were older, Ginny rejoined the Navy’s Hospital Corps in 1976, and went to monthly meetings with her Reserve unit in Providence, and two-week drills at various assigned duty stations.  Some months after a fall in Providence on a rainy hillside (she was not on duty) Ginny was finally discharged (but was not given another “DD214” form, issued to all active service people upon discharge); we enjoyed the extra income while it lasted.