Ken had not taken leave during both the years at war, nor  for the two and a half years as the final stage instructor at flight school.  His commanding officer said that he should think about taking a break.  He did.  He came back to the place where he had grown up.  His parents had moved years before to Oregon,  so Ken looked up his family's friends.  My mom and dad had been his parent's best friends for years--attended all the football games together to see Ken play.  I didn't remember anything about him.  I was in the third grade when he graduated from high school.

His father was pastor of the First Baptist Church.  He baptized me.  I still remember many of his sermons.  As a child, they were dramatic.  He would hang 30-40 foot canvases across the front of the church.  Painted with pictures that followed his sermon so that children would understand.  He would start on the left side of the canvas, and move to the right.  Sometimes a canvas would stay up for weeks as he finished teaching.  In all the years since, I've never heard anyone who came close to his gift for preaching God's Word.  He changed all of our lives with his dedication to studying and teaching.

When Ken came by the house to see my folks, I was seventeen.  He was twenty-six.  I was a silly young girl just starting her senior year in high school.  He was a mature Marine Captain.  Honestly, I never really saw him--I saw his car parked on the street.  An ivory Hudson Hornet convertible with red leather seats. ( I had a bunch of my girl friends at the house with me at the time.)  We asked if we could drive it.  He handed me the keys.  We must have dragged main a dozen times making sure every one in Pryor saw us.  It was so much fun.  But eventually we took his car back and thanked him.  He said goodbye to my folks and left.  I gave no thought of us ever crossing paths again.  He was an incident.  The car was real.

James 1:5a  "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that gives to all men liberally…"  Ken had used a lot of wisdom in the years before that chance meeting.  He had actually made a mental list of all the things he wanted in a wife.  After he returned from Korea, he had been looking.  He hadn't found what he wanted.  Hard to believe.  He was living in Pensacola--surrounded by women.   He was the ultimate "Officer and a Gentleman. (Continued)