Tagged for a lifetime of love
By Tanya Bricking Leach
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| Love letters poured in when we asked readers to tell us their stories for Valentine's Day. More than 100 people sent in letters, snapshots, poems and e-mails. Their stories are a reminder that love can last a lifetime.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser |
Some told of growing old together. Others talked about long-distance love or of falling in love with their first love all over again. Still others told how they met at school dances or reunions, on the Internet or on airplanes. (Even tourists wrote in to say how they keep coming back to relive the romance.)
We heard about first dates, perfect proposals, crushes on the Zippy's waitress, tales involving immigration complications and even a story of a woman who took out a classified ad to rent her condo and ended up finding a boyfriend instead.
We had a hard time narrowing down our favorites, but here are some of them.
Driven by love
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| What does "PINWY" mean? Gunther Ditzel hears that question all the time. It's kind of a long story about Paris being nothing without Resi, the love of his life.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser |
His dad had asked him to send his regards to an old friend he had gone dancing with a few times during World War I.
Little did Ditzel know the family friend's daughter would make his heart skip a beat. He was instantly smitten when Resi opened the door. She was equally charmed, and he took her to a cozy nightclub where they sipped champagne, listened to a strolling violinist and fell in love.
Gunther tried to tell himself their romance wasn't realistic, that love at first sight was for fairy tales. After all, he was on vacation.
After three days, he left for Switzerland and then Paris, where he planned to spend a week. On his fourth day in France, he knew he had to see Resi again. He had the concierge at his hotel send a telegram: "PARIS IS NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, (PINWY) I'M COMING BACK."
He checked out of his hotel, drove through the night and arrived the next morning. He took Resi to a jeweler to buy an engagement ring, and then to the U.S. Consulate to arrange for her visa. She arrived in New Jersey on April 20, 1954, and they married about two weeks later.
The Kahala couple will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary May 1. The license plate on their silver Mercedes-Benz professes their love. It says "PINWY."
"There's no real secret, except to work at it," Gunther says of a marriage that has weathered moves from New England to Japan, Germany, Hawai'i, Texas and California. Over the years, he became a successful partner in a food-brokerage business, and they raised two children, Erika Steinroetter, who lives in Germany, and Wayne Ditzel, who lives in Walnut Creek, Calif., where the Ditzels spend their summers.
Now grandparents of four, their marriage has lasted half a century because "they support each other in whatever they do," said Jane Y. Ditzel, Gunther's sister-in-law in Manoa. "The did have their ups and downs. She needed to learn him and his ways and the ways of America. And with it, she became a true American."
Resi, 73, who dabbled in real estate, was once in beauty pageants and now resembles the "Golden Girl"-era Betty White. She says her 78-year-old husband, a World War II veteran who's semi-retired and sometimes sings in the Honolulu Symphony Chorus, is always the optimist in the relationship.
And she has played the role of adventurer. "There was a certain excitement that was with me always," she said.
They still bicker over things such as the setting on the air conditioner. But wherever they go, they're reminded of their romantic past.
It follows them around on the back of their car.
Hungry heart
Bachelor Roger Chang was set to learn the basics of Chinese cooking when things heated up in the kitchen.
He met Lisa Lee in a cooking class in Kaimuki and thought he could make a good impression by cleaning up without being asked. He had a hard time keeping his mind on food and finally worked up the courage to ask her on a date. It was the magic recipe. Two years later, Chang says it's true that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach: " In my case, it was the beef and broccoli."
Now that cupid's arrow found its mark, Chang would like to make his girlfriend's heart melt. So there's something he asked us to put in print for her:
"By the way, what are you doing for the next 50 years? Lisa Lee, will you marry me?"
Still sweet
Sue Young celebrated her 40th birthday with a first date with Hector Hamilton that ended with a first kiss outside her office door.
Cancer cut their romance short. He died five months after they wed. She scattered his ashes under the tree where they had once held hands, and he remembered in a poem to her.
"I was completely oblivious to the fact my life was a 'love story' till I was running with my friend one morning after Hector died, and I was sharing his many, many stories. Often he would finish one of his tales and ask, 'Now, tell me a story!' How many times I would just panic trying to figure out a story to share. Then my friend suggested our life together was in fact a 'love story' many people never had the opportunity to live."
Stolen love
Donald "D.K." Miller was happy with his lot in life. He was a single Air Force pilot enjoying flying and seeing the world. One night, his flying buddy, John, appeared at his door and wanted to introduce him to Mari Gibson, known as Bunnye, the girl he wanted to marry.
"Standing there was the prettiest girl I had ever seen," Miller remembers.
The next week, Miller was planning an outing on his ski boat and ran into Bunnye in the laundry room. He asked if she wanted to go water skiing, and she agreed. About halfway across the lake, the engine failed. Miller swears he didn't plan it. But it gave him time to get to know Bunnye and even give her a quick kiss.
Thirty years, four children and three grandchildren later, he and Bunnye are still together. They live in Mililani.
(As for John, he ended up marrying a woman at his next duty station, but D.K. has no regrets about stealing Bunnye away.)
Wings of love
Stacy Starr met her beloved four years ago on US Air flight 2669 from Baltimore to Jacksonville, Fla. On the flight, she sat several rows behind him and got up halfway through the flight to use the bathroom. Jared Jacobs still claims he tried to wink at her as she returned to her seat, but they didn't speak until they got to baggage claim. That's when she found out he had just moved to Jacksonville, and she offered to show him around.
Later, she would find out he was going to be sent on a six-month deployment to the Middle East and then to Hawai'i for three years.
But from the moment they met, Starr couldn't get him out of her mind. On vacation on Kaua'i with a girlfriend that summer, she was kayaking and hiking with a friend along the Wailua River. They saw a huge fallen tree, and she told her friend she was going to carve Jared's name into it so that one day she could bring him back there to show it to him.
Two years later, that's where Jared proposed on Feb. 15, 2003 (even though they couldn't find the carving). They recarved the tree to say: "Jared and Stacy Jacobs." They live in Kane'ohe.
Blown over
Murray Hunt of Kailua was aboard the Crystal Harmony on a Christmas cruise from Auckland to Honolulu in 1996 when he and his 80-year-old father stepped out on the deck for a cocktail at sunset.
As they watched the captain navigate through the small tropical islands, they noticed an attractive woman standing about 30 feet in front of them. And just as the ship turned, a gust of wind hit and blew the woman's aloha dress up over her head.
Hunt's father nudged him with his elbow, "Did you see that?" he said.
The gust was enough to blow Hunt over. He made his move and went over to say, "How do you do?"
"I offered her the use of our binoculars," he wrote, "and the rest is history. We've been together since that time and plan to revisit the Crystal Harmony for their Valentine's cruise."
Mr. Fix-it
Brian and Suzanne Parnell met in the yellow pages.
She was a California single mom with three kids, and one day a bad cold forced her to stay home, and a constant drip from the bathroom faucet was driving her nuts. She tried to fix it but only made it worse. So, she looked up the number for a plumber.
She ran to pick up her daughter from kindergarten, and when she got home, the "hunk" in the driveway was about to leave.
Her non-English-speaking live-in wouldn't let the plumber in, but Suzanne rushed to open the door. Then she promptly complained when it cost her $9.30 for a little washer that went into the faucet.
Brian laughed and said maybe he could make it up by taking her to dinner. She told him she couldn't because she worked seven nights a week. Then he went out to his truck, and Suzanne watched in horror as he opened the door and water poured out. Her kids had been running through the sprinkler and flooded his truck.
That didn't deter him. He showed up at her work at a Mexican restaurant that very night.
They got married in Vegas in July 1964, combined their Brady Bunch-style family, moved to Kane'ohe and are preparing to celebrate their 40th anniversary.
New York, New York
From the time Goro and Mary Arakawa courted as students at New York and Columbia universities to the time he sat at her bedside when she was dying of cancer in 1997, their love story was an inspiration to anyone Goro could pull aside to listen.
Today, the 81-year-old Waipahu man still carries a picture in his wallet from their first date to a football game in 1952.
On occasion, he also carries around a miniature Statue of Liberty. It reminds him of the first day of spring in 1953 when he proposed as they rode the Staten Island ferry.
"Ever since then, well, for a long while anyway, whenever we saw the Statue of Liberty shown in a movie or TV show, Mary would give me a remembering poke in the ribs."
Lady Liberty also has significance for newlyweds Russell and Laura Rebmann.
It was there, under the fireworks of New York City, that they wed just weeks ago.
Deployment plans sped their nuptials. They started dating in July and discovered in October that Russell's Army Reserve unit from Camp Smith was being deployed to Iraq for a year. While visiting Mainland relatives at Christmas, they got engaged and decided to celebrate New Year's Eve in New York.
"As fate would have it, New Year's in New York has always been an extra-special night for our family," the former Laura Schoenrock wrote. Although Russ didn't know it when he proposed and planned to turn their party in the city into a wedding, family history had a way of repeating itself. That's where Laura's grandparents eloped in 1936 on New Year's Eve in Times Square.
Secret agent?
It was 1981, and two Ivy Leaguers were attending a lecture at Harvard. At a reception later, a striking blonde came up to Bob Dupire-Nelson and said, "Do I know you from somewhere?" It wasn't a pickup line. Based on the questions she heard him ask at the lecture, she suspected he might be a CIA agent.
"Finally (demonstrating the benefit of years of Ivy League education and that that many thousands of dollars of student loans had not gone for naught), I asked her what her name was," he wrote. "She told me, and then everything fell into place. It turned out that we had been in an international fellows program together at Columbia a few years before, but that since there were about 50 people in the program, we had never actually met. (This also explained the CIA association — on a group trip to Washington, we had visited CIA headquarters at Langley, Va.) So, somewhere deep in her subconscious, Debbie had retained a memory of seeing me inside of CIA headquarters.)"
They decided to get together the next day for a cup of coffee. They never got around to the coffee that day, but they did get a fine romance brewing.
Tanya Bricking Leach writes about relationships for The Advertiser. Reach her at 525-8026 or tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com.
