Today it has been 60 years since I got to be the princess in a fairy tale romance.  I was eighteen years old when an officer and a gentleman swept me off my feet.  He was everything you could dream of--a Captain in the Marine Corps.  A decorated war veteran with two Distinguished Flying Crosses, seven air medals (among dozens of others)--all that and only twenty five years old. (And good-looking to boot.)

He would fly from Pensacola to Pryor every weekend and spend two days trying to talk me into marrying him.  I would say "No," and the next weekend we would go through the same scenario.  I don't know how many times I said no, but he didn't give up.  He would buzz the town, break the sound barrier--which broke windows in our little burg.  People would see me down town and tell me to marry him so that everyone could have some peace.

"What's it going to take?" he asked me one weekend.

"At least three-quarters of a carat." I answered.  "Platinum.  Four prongs."  I was just kidding him, but that week, the ring came in the mail--exactly as I had described it.

He called to ask if I had tried it on.  I had.  It fit.  As I am typing this, I am looking at it on my finger.  I thank God every day that I finally said yes.  It was truly a match made in heaven.  I shudder when I think that he might have given up, and I would have missed a life with the greatest man I have ever met in my entire life.  Everyone that knew him loved him.

That's all behind me now.  He's gone.  But I know that once upon a time, I was a princess who was pursued by the greatest guy in the entire world.  So, if I get down on myself, I think about that.  Once upon a time, I got to be the princess in a fairy tale.