I was crying my eyes out. It was late summer of 1966. I had gone so far as to actually arrive at the ASU campus in Tempe, Arizona but was so filled with anxiety and fear that I could not go in. My cousin Ruthie, who had driven me there, was obviously ticked off at me, but after we sat there in the car for some time, and I sobbed uncontrollably, she drove us quietly away. We had something to eat at a restaurant (Sambo's? Denny's?) and went home. I had graduated from Rincon High ...

I found out that BFD was going to the Gulf while watching AFN, the military TV station in Europe. It was 1990; we were stationed in Stuttgart, Germany with the US Army. We had already heard about Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait from the news in August; now it was November. Earlier that year we had seen our oldest son, HBW, off to Argentina to be a missionary for two years. Our second-oldest boy was the one who took care of the family while HBW and BFD were away. I did resent the surprise...