Mary Jo Bellner Swartzberg
This is Ann’s story – about love lost and love found.
Ann was born in Aberdeen, Washington just prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Her father was a pre-med student but after Pearl Harbor he enlisted in the Navy as a Navy corpsman. The family traveled from base to base until her father was sent to the Pacific. Then Ann and her mother shared a small house with her aunt and cousin. Her maternal grandparents lived close by and they watched the children while Ann’s aunt and mother built B29’s for the war effort.
After the war ended, her dad and uncle opened a bowling alley and café in Aberdeen. Ann still remembers setting pins and patting out hamburgers for the family business. And, yes, she did learn to bowl.
After her parents divorced, and until she went to college, Ann spent her summers in Leavenworth, Washington visiting with her dad and “Mimi” (her grandmother). There she spent time gardening, fly fishing, camping and hunting with her dad. She still loves to fly fish and practice target shooting. It was her grandmother “Mimi” who taught her the love of the land and, in particular, how to grow vegetables and flowers, a passion she still has today.
Ann received a scholarship to attend Good Samaritan School of Nursing in Portland, Oregon where she received her R.N. diploma. Her hometown sweetheart and future husband, Gary Simkins, was enrolled at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland and, coincidentally, Ann continued her education by accepting a post-graduate position at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, about 26 miles away from Annapolis. They married after Gary’s graduation. Gary and Ann had two sons. Subsequently, at the height of the Vietnam War, Gary’s squadron had three deployments to Vietnam.
In early 1973 Ann answered their front door and saw Gary’s squadron commander’s wife with tears in her eyes, standing in front of her. Beyond her friend she saw the black sedan with military men walking up the sidewalk. She immediately slammed the door, not wanting to believe what she had seen. But she could not deny the inevitable. She was informed that Gary was killed on his third tour of duty to Vietnam, leaving Ann a widow at age 31 with two young boys under the age of five.
According to Ann the Navy community is a tight knit family. And, while the weeks and months after Gary’s death were extremely difficult, she attributes the closeness of the Navy community and her Christian faith to help her get through such a sad and difficult time.
Late in the following year a mutual friend introduced Ann to Lew, who had never been married. Needless to say, they fell in love and were married in late 1974.
To be continued — the rest of the story!