Share Our Lives - How I Met My Significant Other or Best Friend

This month we're sharing how we met our significant other or best friend.

Vic and I met at work - Saipan Cable TV on the tropical island of Saipan in the Western Pacific.

This was our workplace - to say that we were both horrified when we saw it is an understatement.  It was a three-bedroom house converted into office space.  In the back was a shipping container that was converted into our news studio and the production teams' work area.  Primitive?  Yes, absolutely!  That's part of the fleet parked there in front.  The roads on Saipan were mostly unpaved and full of potholes from frequent rain.  A fleet of all-wheel drive vehicles would have been better but our general manager was notoriously thrifty so it was what it was.

I was the Administrative Manager and Vic was a member of an eight-man construction crew we hired from the Philippines when we were upgrading our cable system to fiber optics.

Our first real photo as a couple
Celebrating Vic's birthday
September 1992

We met in the summer of 1992, got engaged at Christmas, and got married on February 26, 1993.

Our wedding day - I don't think Vic even owned a tie!

Did I know then that we'd be where we are today? Never in a million years. I have no idea where I thought we'd be as the years went by. A few months after we got married, we began to realize that we wouldn't be staying on Saipan too much longer - the company was in dire financial straits and we knew we had to make a back-up plan. Little did I know the military would be a part of that plan!

Vic worked as a technician after we got married and one of his responsibilities was to update the character-generated messages that were posted on one of the cable channels. It was a spot to place birthday greetings, items for sale, and community announcements. The Navy recruiter came up from Guam to give a presentation at the high school and stopped by to put an announcement on the channel with his contact information in case anyone in the community was interested in talking with him. Vic came home and said, "Let's go, we're going to meet with the Navy recruiter!". Off I waddled, being about five months pregnant at the time, and our military adventure began. We had to wait until Vic got his resident status, but less than a year later, he was off to basic training. I have to tell you that I was thrilled by the whole thing - I'd lost my ID card when I turned eighteen (my Dad was career Army) and now I was going to get it back - yippee!

We're celebrating our 31st anniversary in two weeks - we went from Saipan to Florida to Illinois to Virginia to Rhode Island and back to Virginia then to Washington and back to Virginia again before my travel with the Navy ended with the final trip back to Washington.  Vic continued on with two unaccompanied tours, one to Okinawa and then to Maryland before finally getting an assignment in Washington so we could be under the same roof again.  Now the journey is coming to an end as Vic will retire in October of this year and start a new career (TBD).  We're making Washington our final destination (unless he gets a post-Navy job in England, of course!), we have our home here, and really love the state.  It's been an adventure and we've weathered ups and downs and stayed strong together.  He is my best friend.

Join us in March for 5 Items You Can't Live Without