[jdviole2]

I don't know how many times Helena and I were asked how we met. Especially after people found out that we only knew each other 3 weeks before we got engaged. So here is the story. I need to warn you though that this will sound like the plot of a cheesy romance novel or maybe a Hallmark movie but I swear its the truth. In one of my first posts I told you that we met at a picnic sponsored by the company where Helena and my dad worked. I was home on leave from the navy and dad had bought a ticket for me to go to the picnic. Helena was supposed to ride with one of the other young women at work. Friday night she called my dad to tell him that she wouldn't be at the picnic. The father of the girl she was going to ride with had suffered a fatal heart attack. Dad talked her into coming with us. My mom made a point of assuring me that this wasn't any kind of setup. Saturday morning we pulled up in front of her parents house and she came running down the stairs to the car. I fell in love that very minute. We are talking slow motion, soft focus, romantic movie music time. The picnic was held at a local amusement park. Since we were the only two single people near the same age, she asked me if I wanted to go on some rides with her. We rode a lot of rides. A few too many actually. For the first and only time in my life I got motion sickness. (Of course later when people asked me what I thought about her when we first met I could tell them honestly that she made me sick) We held hands as we walked like we had been going together for years. The next week there was a concert with the Edgar Winter Group and the James Gang. I went to her workplace and asked her if she wanted to go with me. We had a great time, and shared our first kiss on her parents front porch somewhere around midnight. (Several years after we got married she told me that the day I asked her to the concert she called the guy she had been going with for more than a year and broke it off with him) Every day for the next week I spent lunch with her in a tiny park (under the interstate) near where she worked. The more time I spent with her the more it seemed like I had known her forever. The following week I was due to return to Naples Italy and the navy. I didn't want to take a chance that she might drift away from me so I proposed. She said yes immediately. None of our parents raised any objections. We were both in our early 20's so it wasn't a "teenage" romance kind of thing. My mom was sort of in a state of shock. Since we hadn't known each other that long she wasn't sure it would last. In fact just after our 25th anniversary a friend of hers asked how we were doing and mom answered "well they are still together". Great show of confidence huh? She truly loved Helena though and so did my dad. Hell everybody loved Helena. Sappy story isn't it. A mixed bag of pictures today. Number one is another Pompeii shot. She is standing next to a public drinking fountain. That was in 1974. The next picture is from the early 80's. She is coming down a staircase from the top of a lighthouse in San Diego. The third shot is in her parents home right after I got out of the navy in Sept of 1974. She was trying out a new hairstyle. Must not have liked it since I never saw it again. The fourth picture shows her relaxing in front of tower arch in Arches National Park. This was in the late 80's. The fifth shot is her at the beach in LA. Again in the late 80's. The sixth picture shows her taking a break in San Diego during the trip in 1990 (the skinny dip trip). The last was taken in 1984 while in New Orleans for the worlds fair.