Tag: marriage
Gulf War Penpals Become Life Pals
by admin on Aug.05, 2009, under Uncategorized
This is cute. During the Persian Gulf War young Jaime Benefit, only 13 years old, wrote a letter addressed to “Any Soldier”. In it she offered moral support and encouragement, along with general appreciation for what the soldier was doing for his country. 19 year old Jeremy Clayton received her letter, and they continued the contact by becoming penpals. They eventually lost touch, but 19 years later, Jaime decided to look up her childhood friend on Facebook. And the rest is happy history. Here is the entire article:
It started with a letter – and ended in a wedding.
Nearly two decades ago, 13-year-old Jaime Benefit wrote a letter addressed to “Any Soldier” during the Persian Gulf War, expressing her support for the troops as they prepared to invade Iraq.
The letter made its way to Pfc. Jeremy Clayton, a 19-year-old soldier from Charleston, S.C., who was serving with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
The two became pen pals, writing back and forth about sports, high school and their families.
“Just stuff to keep their minds off of what was going on and keep their spirits up,” said Benefit, 32.
After the war ended, the two stopped writing, but Benefit always wondered what happened to Clayton.
“I’d always kept his letters,” she said. “I had them wrapped in a red-white-and-blue ribbon.”
Earlier this year, she searched his name on Facebook and sent him a short note: “Were you in Desert Storm?”
Clayton, 38, now out of the Army, saw the message and had one reaction: “Shock and awe.”
“I just knew I had to find out what she was doing,” he recalled.
The two agreed to meet in March, and their fate was sealed.
“It took my breath,” Clayton said of seeing his one-time pen pal in the flesh. “I was actually shaking and I’m a pretty strong man. I just said to myself, ‘You have to do whatever you can to make sure you spend the rest of your life with this woman.’”
Clayton proposed not long after, and the two got married July 15 in a simple ceremony on the beach in Charleston.
“It was fate that I got her letter,” he said. “And her finding me 19 years later was fate.”
The Internet may have brought the newlyweds together, but they still rely on good old pen and paper to keep their bond strong.
“She writes me notes every morning and puts them in my lunch,” he said.
War Time is Hard On Family Time
by admin on Aug.04, 2009, under Uncategorized
As this war drags on, more and more problems on the home front seem to be surfacing. The main problem? Our soldiers are being repeatedly sent back to the field, instead of serving one tour and coming home – like in the past. In addition to the added time in the field aggravating the problem of PTSD, all this distance and separation is beginning to have a heavy toll on the relationships and/or marriages of our men and women in service. With all the time spent apart, couples are adjusting more and more to being alone.This mentality isn’t healthy for a marriage and doesn’t promote a couple to act as a team.
This article posted on USA Today discusses the problem in detail:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — If military families are quietly “coming apart at the seams,” as the wife of the Army’s top soldier told Congress in June, the evidence is here in the dining room of Army Capt. Mark Flitton and his wife, Lynn.Their oldest child, Scott, 15, stormed into this room early this year after an argument with his father, asking why his mother ever married “that man.” It was here in March where the couple first discussed divorce.
In July, Mark and Lynn explained at the dining room table how they live together now only on a superficial level, driven apart by back-to-back combat deployments and marking days until he goes back to war in Iraq next year.
“I haven’t come home yet,” admits Mark, 46, who during the past 10 years has spent a cumulative 36 months away in three separate tours. “I’m still in the war mode, and I don’t know that I’m going to come out of it until I know I don’t have any more war rotations to go back on.”
“We’ve just become so comfortable in living separate lives,” says Lynn, 49.
