How we Met

Norb and I entered the service approximately the same time, December and January 1943. Norb went to Paris Island, then officer's training at Quantico then to Portsmouth Navy Yard in Maine across the NH border in June.

I spent one month in Holyoke College, the next month at Smith, and two months at Radcliff in supply school and landed in Portsmouth Navy Yard, Maine in June also.

He was assigned to and stayed at the Portsmouth Navy prison. I was assigned to the supply department on the Navy Yard and boarded and roomed with other girls in a house in Portsmouth. There was a dance at the officer's club every Saturday night. A very good dinner was served. I remember the avacados in the tossed salad, a new treat for me, and the delicious flakey pie, Harry's pie crust made with lard. I think I have the recipe.

After a boring six months or so, a Halloween dance was planned. People told me about a marine I should meet. And, people told Norb about a wave he should meet. One Saturday night, we girls were sitting at a table and a marine, Pete Gentenine, came over to our table and asked if any of us could dance the rumba and would dance the rumba with him. I said yes although you would all know exactly how much I know about a rumba.

Anyway he told me he had a friend, a marine I should meet. And we had a date Wednesday night to meet this marine but he never showed up. So we prepared for the Halloween party. I came dressed as Pistol Packing Mama.

"Pistol Packing Mama, Pistol Packing Mama, Lay Your Pistol Down, The other night in the cabaret were we having fun Pistol Packing Mama Lay Your Pistol Down."

I wore a borrowed red and white tablecloth skirt (skirt made out of that material) and bought a gun and holster and a red flannel cowgirl hat with red balls of fringe around the edge at the dime store.

Also, I had never had any champagne on two occasions that had just passed when my father and then again someone else had champagne and I didn't have any. So in the afternoon I went to the bar and bought a bottle of champagne and had it put on ice at the bar. That was my champagne. That night we were standing around in front of the bar. I think that Pete Gentenine and Norb were there and I was standing next to a coast guard officer who Norb thought I had a date with but I didn't. Polly Hunt, a vivacious outgoing wave, joined us. I said to myself, "They are all going to talk to Polly" so I turned around and left the room to get my bottle of champagne from behind a curtain to go home. Norb followed me out of the room before I got to the curtain and asked me to dance.

If we went back to Portsmouth I could take you to the pole on the dance floor, the very spot, where I looked up at him and thought, "Gee, he'd be nice." We had a wonderful evening. There was an excellent band and one of our favorite pieces was "Side by Side."

We had several dates during the week probably some over at the prison so I could see the prison and maybe some at my house. We went to church Sunday morning at the Yard chapel. During the war we worked at the Navy Yard six days a week so the only free time would be Saturday night and Sunday. We took a train Saturday evening to Boston, rented two single rooms at the Statler Hotel and went out to dinner. Later that evening we went up to my hotel room. Norb bought a Sunday paper somehow and we went up to my room at the hotel and were reading the funnies. Norb looked at me and asked if I would marry him. I immediately said yes and didn't need to think it over. The next morning we went to Mass and felt very serious. We couldn't believe what had happened. I went home to Burlington, Iowa for Thanksgiving because Thanksgiving was my parent's 25th anniversary and Norb had adventures of his own with the marines from the prison.

We went to Schenectady, NY so that we could visit Norb's family in Schenectady. When we came back we both owed our friends two or three overnight duties. It took us a good bit of January to pay them all back for standing for us. We were very bored with life in Portsmouth and wanted to go to Boston for a weekend again.

Pete Gentenine went to Boston one weekend. We asked him to reserve us two single rooms at the Statler. When he came back he said there weren't any single rooms anywhere. Norb and I went to Boston one weekend anyway. We went from hotel to hotel and later to rooming houses but there were no single rooms anywhere! The city was flooded with service people. Finally we got in a poorer section of downtown and located a double room in a rundown hotel. When were were registering, in our minds I would sleep in the double room and Norb would sleep in a flop house around the corner. When we registered for the room and the clerk discovered that only I would sleep there, and I later heard this was true, that it's against the law to rent a double room to a single person at that time. So, he would not rent us the room. So we had to make an evening of it at a night club and take the midnight train back to Portsmouth. There was a cover drink at the Nightclub called a Zombie. So we each ordered one.

It was in a tall narrow glass and I put my finger on the top and said what a gip; this is solid ice cubes all the way down. So we ordered another one. We each had two. As it turns out the drink lived up to its name and going home on the train I put my head against the window and let it slide down over and over.

So we got married not because we slept together and had to get married but because our not using the room resulted in events that caused us to get married.

When we arrived at the house where I lived with three other waves they were not happy to see us. They were in the midst of a party. The next day, Monday, they told me they would like me to leave; that this was not working out. I guess Norb and I put a damper on their parties being engrossed with each other.

I said "Can't we sit in the dining room?" They said "We can't afford the heat." So Tuesday I said to Norb "We better get married or else." And Norb said "We'll get married." My mother sent me my birth certificate, my baptismal record. My father was really not happy about it that I was marrying a Catholic. Father Francis wrote me a letter "Mary I thought it was you all the time." And he helped arrange the wedding within two weeks. Norb and I took the train to Schenectady and I slept up on the third floor and Norb on the second and we managed to get dressed for the wedding without seeing each other.

We each were escorted to the wedding separately in Tom Campbell's limousine. He was an undertaker. We were married in St. Helen's Church. So we both wore our uniforms and I wore white gloves and carried a white prayerbook with a gardenia on it.

Father Finn had arranged for a color guard six or eight sailors with their trumpets. We were greeted by them playing their trumpets.

Father Francis brought the flowers over in his car. There were eleven priests in the sanctuary including Father Fitzgerald, perhaps he was the president of Siena, and Father Peyton, a solemn high Mass.

Father Francis told me to take my gloves off at the Credo for the wedding ceremony. If I didn't Helen was to wring her hands together. I was in a trance and before I knew it Helen was wringing her hands. That was when it dawned on me "This is really happening."

When the Mass was over we turned to go down the aisle and had taken a couple of steps pass the Communion rail and Father Francis said "Norb come back." We turned around and went back and Monsignor McGinn gave us his blessing. We turned around to go down and the same thing happened again and I think the third time we were a good way down the aisle and Norb and I were set on going but Father repeated it emphatically "Norbert come back." So all of the priests gave us their blessing. Sally Stanton, the organist, had started the familiar wedding exit on the organ and we finally turned back. Everybody laughed. It was a relief from the solemn wedding.

We went to a wedding lunch at the Mohawk Golf Club. Father Francis loaned us his car and Norb and I drove to the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls for a two day honeymoon. We spent the rest of the time on the third floor of 1377 Union Street with a side trip up to Father's camp up near Thatcher Park. At the end of the week we returned to Portsmouth and stayed in a section of Portsmouth down by the water.

We were only there a week because Norb had received orders to the Fleet Marine Force. A nice young Polish couple rented the apartment and let me live there in my room with them. Later, about eight of us waves rented a huge shingled house surrounded by verandas, a mansion like house down by the water next door to where Admiral Byrd had a house. It was also next door to the General Store and one house away from the Lobster Pound where they brought in huge tunas and hung them up on a scale. Norb visited me once there and we stayed in my room up on the third floor. I visited him in July and he has told that story in his journal.

Our wedding was spontaneous in both our meeting and getting engaged and in the events that brought about our wedding. We think God directed it and that is how he brought us together.

I had been saying special prayers to St. Joseph at his side altar at St. Mary's Church in Portsmouth. Norb was praying to meet someone also.