There’s a poster Eric and I have had for many decades. We bought it soon after we were married, and during most of our life together, it has been positioned on the inside of our bedroom door so we could stare at it and memorize every line of it. Now? It’s on the outside of our bedroom door. Yep, it’s a little beat up, but it’s still there! It’s a cartoon sketch of a guy and a girl all tangled up on the floor amidst several overturned books. The caption is “The Lord must’ve brought us together.” In the next few chapters, you can see God’s hand in our lives as He did just that.
When I arrived at Lackland AFB, Texas, I was a valuable recruit, with a grade point average above 4.0 and a diploma marked “With Highest Honors.” I was Somebody. Quickly, that melted away when I found out I could not make my bed fast enough. I had been given the responsibility of being a squad leader after a few days, only to eventually be fired because I couldn’t keep my area perfect and also be responsible for the other girls in my squad. I was too slow. Once, someone short-sheeted my bed, which resulted in more delays and getting in trouble.
And another time, I was grounded for taking a picture of the outside of our dorms because in the short amount of time it took me to line up the picture with some willing passersby, someone caught me outside without my hat on and asked for my 341.
To make matters worse, I got a letter from my boyfriend telling me, “We need to just break off the relationship, Margie. You should stop thinking about boys and focus on Jesus.”
Just in case you’re wondering, writing someone a “Dear John” letter while they are in Basic Military Training (BMT) is a really terrible idea. I had had a lifetime of doing my best and not failing, but I had lost some of my cockiness at this point, and felt there was a real risk of being “washed out” and sent back home. Maybe I wasn’t military material after all!
There was an obstacle course the women were required to try – once. It was really hard – massive walls to climb, water to swing across on a rope, etc. But it was called “The Confidence Course.” It was supposed to boost your confidence, as you were able to accomplish these tasks. Ha! That was a laugh! I couldn’t do any of it! So the letter from Joe only made matters worse – he was one more man who had left me, and I did a lot of crying.
But on the bright side, the best thing about BMT is that they did go out of their way to make sure trainees can go to church to boost morale. There were general Protestant chapel services and Catholic chapel services, along with specific denominational services at Lackland – far more choices than I’d ever run across in all my years of being an Air Force dependent. There were also supplementary meetings we could attend, including one called “Open Forum,” which was sort of a glorified youth group. And on Sunday night, the flight was scheduled to deep clean the dorm – but, you were excused if you went to church. Needless to say, I went to church as often as I could.
The first Sunday morning, a group of us in dress blues lined up and marched over to the general Protestant chapel service. Unfortunately, I found this service was theologically very watered down and non-offensive, pretty much just “God loves you.” But an Assembly of God church off base had a ministry to the Basic Trainees and sent a choir to Lackland, called “Silhouettes of the Master,” so I chose the AG service the next Sunday because it would probably be more like the church Joe went to at home, and I liked that.
I loved hearing the choir and immersed myself in the worship. Lifting my hands to the Lord also lifted my spirits. I could tell the Lord was with us, and the Lord was for us. Afterwards, the choir mingled with the trainees to minister any way they could, and one young man in particular headed straight to me.
“Hi! I’m Eric!” he said, introducing himself, and I responded with my name.
Immediately, another choir member named Bob introduced himself, telling me that he was also in the Air Force, but not as a trainee. He was “permanent party” at Lackland, which means he was actually stationed at the base.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” I said. “We’ve been instructed not to fraternize with the permanent party personnel at Lackland.”
That’s when a big grin appeared on Eric’s face. “OH!” he happily informed me. “ I’m not a permanent party at Lackland. I’m a permanent party at Kelly AFB – it’s right next door to Lackland.”
“Okay! I guess that doesn’t apply to you, then!”
That was just what he wanted to hear. He quickly wrote down his phone number on something handy and presented it to me, in case I ever wanted to call. It seems he had been watching me from the stage, and he says it was love at first sight.
Looking back at all this, I recently asked several friends who knew me back then to tell me what they had thought of me. I already knew what my brother Dan thought of me – he called me “Smat” which meant “Smart” and “Fat.” But I did get some input from others, who said I was:
Smart
Sweet
Cheerful
Friendly
Beautiful
Vivacious
But what did Eric see in me? What made him fall in love with me at first sight? He saw me worshipping God, and said I was rather glowy while I lifted my hands in praise to God. He said what set me apart was that I was joyful. Yeah, BMT isn’t the place to find a lot of joyful people, so that was unique. And the other thing that attracted him, he said, was that I was godly. This is what we were both looking for and we needed to hold on to that as firmly as we could, because godliness is rare.
Not that we were without sin! Au contraire!
Eric said he had to contrive a way to see me again. So, we kind of dated, but it was rather a weird kind of dating. We trainees were strictly prohibited from being in any POV (privately-owned vehicle) and had to walk everywhere. We could never wear civilian clothes, nor leave the base. And our hours were not our own. Only a few times was there ever an opportunity to do what we wanted to do.
Eric and I attended Open Forum night together, and neither of us remember what it was about. We saw each other at the Church of God services on Sunday nights, too. Someone actually had an accordion, and I volunteered to play it. Eric and I discovered we knew the same songs – the “Jesus Music” I had learned at home and at Calvary Chapel, even though he was from Indiana. We sang complicated duets at that service, like “Father, I Adore You.”
Eric saw my Basic Training Manual, which I always had on me. I had decorated the cover with little ink drawings and doodles during some of the more boring classes, and many of the drawings had something to do with Joe, back home. “That’s my boyfriend,” I told him sorrowfully. “He didn’t really like it that I joined the Air Force. And I just got a letter from him, saying he wanted to break off the relationship, and that I should stop thinking about boys and focus on Jesus.”
Eric looked at Joe’s last name and remarked, “That’s okay, you’ll only have to change one letter.” Yeah, Joe’s last name was pretty close to Eric’s!
By this time, I was getting the idea that A1C Eric J. Haley was getting a little serious about me, but I really didn’t know him that well. So I thought I’d better find out at an accelerated pace! I came up with a list of questions and quizzes to find out who he was and what he believed, because what I wanted in any kind of mate was someone who would be God-honoring and faithful, but also my best friend. Any time we were together, he was submitted to rapid-fire interrogation to see if he could win the prize. The hardest questions I asked were about “where would you find” this and that in the Bible, concerning various key doctrines.
He passed, but not with flying colors. Maybe I wouldn’t have either! My questions, at age 18, weren’t as refined as they would have been now, at age 64. Back then, they were more along the lines of “What must I do to be saved?” and “Have you ever been baptized in the Holy Spirit?” along with questions about the Second Coming of Christ and maybe some about his family and upbringing. (Not sure about the latter.)
I did find out he got saved, baptized, and filled with the Holy Spirit at age 14 and had wanted to be a chaplain’s assistant, but he didn’t get that job, so he was working as an instrument specialist – altimeters, turn-and-bank indicators, and such. But I could tell that his heart was wrapped up in Jesus. Eric had been directly involved in the operations of a Christian coffeehouse in Lafayette, Indiana, called “Natural High,” had witnessed to his teachers in his school assignments, was on the editorial staff of a “Jesus People” newspaper, and had even been involved in a controversial attempt to hold a Jesus Music concert in a cornfield. Yeah – this was a pretty good resumé!
Once, on a Saturday, he knew I would have some time off, so he was really hoping he would be able to find me, but finding one particular person on that base, as they just happened to be walking around, was a longshot. So, praying that the Lord would help him, he drove his car around the base watching the faces of the multitudes of slick-sleeves milling around. Sure enough, he spied me on my way to the library, so he parked his car and we walked there together.
Meanwhile, in the dorm, there were nightly disturbances. There was this blond airman named Robyn, who said she was possessed by a demon. This was getting unnerving to many people because she would cry out, scratch herself, and be generally uncontrollable except that she told us she could make the demon leave by mindlessly chanting “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus …”
I knew I had to find an answer to the problem. The Youth Group at the Baptist Church back home had left me ill-prepared for a spiritual battle such as this one, but I thought Eric might have some advice, since their church did believe in encounters with the supernatural, and I knew he could pray. I had to see him, or at least call him.
You’ll remember, this was in the days before cell phones. But we had rows and rows of something called “phone booths” downstairs, outside, near the laundry room. For reference, watch an old Superman movie. He used phone booths as a changing room to expose his superhero costume. Remember that? Phone booths had phones in them, and these could be used whenever the TI authorized it.
I devised a plan. The next day, I volunteered to wash the laundry for the whole flight – 50 girls. Then, as the clothes were agitating, I was able to slip into the phone booth unobserved and call the number Eric had given me. That was a really risky business, especially since it didn’t do any good – he was working night shift and was sleeping during the day. I reached his roommate, who told Eric I sounded nice …
Eric was really frustrated that I actually did call him and he wasn’t available. He told his roommate to “Back off! She’s mine!” We never were successful at solving the problem with Airman Robyn, but Eric, for sure, was starting to see God’s hand in everything.
In the end, Basic Training really is a very short period of time: thirty days of training in only six weeks, and when you are finished, you graduate a different person. It’s similar to getting a perm – the first chemical breaks down the structure of your hair. Then you make the hair conform to curlers and finally neutralize the first chemical. Going forward, you have curly hair. In BMT, upon graduation, you are again an important person, confident and capable, a member of the greatest airborne fighting force in the world. If you make it through, pass your tests, and don't crack, you are ready to serve your country.
In Basic Training, you are issued all your “stuff,” like various uniforms, a field jacket, a raincoat, your hat, a purse, and a duffel bag. And then you learn exactly how to take care of it, how to fold it or hang it up, and even how to space your hangers. You may not think it is important to fold your underwear, but if you do, you may have been in the military.
At night, we used a flashlight we nicknamed the “Lackland Laser” to see where we were going. It had a tapered yellow plastic tube on the end which made it look like a sawed-off Star Wars lightsaber – before Star Wars was ever introduced into the American way of life. Eric said he could always tell when I was coming, even in the dark, because of a certain swing to my Lackland Laser when I walked.
Just before graduation, Eric began thinking about what would become of our newly-begun relationship. He decided to fast about it and to pray that I would stay longer because he needed more time. Fifty members of my flight graduated. (I think so – it may be that a few of them washed out.) But only three of us didn’t have orders the day after graduation, including me. Those of us who remained were POTs (post-training), and got odd jobs during our extended stay. We had to move our stuff to a different barracks. During that time, we were able to do things like change into our civies (civilian clothes), ride in a POV, and leave the base during our time off.
Eric was ecstatic! The prayer of faith worked! I believe I was only there a week or ten days, but it was long enough. We saw each other about every time I was off work.
And we drove together to one of his favorite places – the top of the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio – and viewed the city together. He told me he was going to ask me to marry him.
Finally my orders came, and with them, the time came to say good-bye. I boarded a blue bus and headed for Sheppard AFB, also in Texas, where my tech school would be. In seven short weeks, the Air Force would turn me into a Programming Specialist. Eric and I exchanged addresses and he said he would come to see me at Sheppard.
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