Ken was the most unusual, interesting, confident person I have ever known, heard or read about.  And he transmitted those qualities to the people around him.  If you were in his inner circle, he assumed you had those qualities as well.  He granted you space to become what he already assumed you were.

Two months after I married him, he turned twenty-seven.  A very old twenty-seven.  Marine boot camp, flight school, cat shots off of carriers, thirteen months at war, getting shot at every day, getting hit seven times and surviving, had aged him.  He was a man.  A man's man.  I've often wondered why he chose a girl child to marry.  But choose he did.  And not lightly.  He knew what he wanted.  He had a plan for marriage that was for life.  And knew exactly what he was looking for.

It wasn't like he didn't have dozens of choices.  He did.  Hollywood choices.  While he was flying out of El Toro in California, John Wayne would come down to the squadron and line up the unmarried aviators to fly in his movies.  (John didn't want to use married guys--in case there was an accident.)  The government looked on it as a win-win. War movies were the thing at that time and the US needed men to join up.  Marine pilots came with free gas and free airplanes--and were capable of arriving on target in a movie film-shot at the right moment.  Ken flew in a bunch of them.  Toro Toro.  Flying Leathernecks.  I wish I had written all of that down.

He wanted me.  And he didn't have a giving up bone in his body.  He would ask me to marry him; I would say no, and the next weekend he would fly whatever he could round up back to Pryor.  And ask again.  And I would say no.  I was eighteen--what more explanation is there.  He was just an old friend of my parents.   But like I said, he granted you space to become what he already assumed you were.  And he assumed I was going to become his wife.  He assumed I would come to my senses?

Why me?  Ken had a list.  He knew what he wanted in a wife.  I was it.  I asked him once about that--how I had met all the "qualifications" on his list.  "Oh," he said, "You didn't.  You missed two points.  That was deflating.  "What!  What did I miss," I asked.  By that time he had convinced me I was perfect.  "You were too young.  And you had never lived on your own or been away from home.  Being too young won't be a problem now, but someday it will, someday you will probably be alone." He was right.  It matters now.  But for 57 years, It didn't.  We were perfect together.  I do so miss him.