Following their first date, Mom and Dad saw each other four or five times over the next three weeks. At one point they had a falling out, and Dad he says he thought that was the end of it. Dad recalls that they hadn't spoken for several days. He and Bill Squires were hitchhiking up to the sand dunes in Michigan when a car full of girls (Mom and her sisters) passed by and didn't even stop, "Squires looked at me and said, 'You know that was Katie', and I said 'I know', and that's when I was sure it was over." On graduation day Dad went back to his dorm in the evening, not having spoken to Mom in a week or so. "I was planning to leave for Boston the next day when the dorm phone rang (there was one phone for four floors), and it was Mother calling to say congratulations. I asked her to come meet my parents the next day, and she did. She came straight from her work at Bendix and we met in a cafeteria or someplace. Then we dropped her off at the bus station and that was it." Mom recalls, "John was in Navy ROTC and soon as he graduated he had a few short weeks at home and then went to boot camp and then on to the Philippines -- I went to Boston for one weekend in June and he came to South Bend one weekend in September just before he went overseas." Dad says that "when Mother visited Boston in June, I asked if she knew that I wanted to marry , she said yes, and I don't think we talked about it again." Laughing, Dad said, "You know, you have to know a person before you do something like this, I'd known her all of three weeks -- one of which we'd had nothing to do with each other." Over Labor Day weekend Dad went to South Bend and met Mom's parents. He gave Mom a miniature Notre Dame class ring as an engagement ring before he left for California. Dad flew from Oakland to Hawaii, where the Navy lost him and he was able to spend a week of free time before flying off to the Philippines. Once in the Philippines, he was stationed in Subic Bay near Manila. He worked with the Seabees, Navy engineers. Previous Table of Contents Next