By JOANN HELLMANN

In early 1973, I felt like a real Nowhere Woman: a young twenty-something with a going-nowhere job, a not-ready-for-marriage mindset and a hankering to go anywhere well west of my little Jersey Shore town. So I decided to boldly go where few women were going then and joined the Navy.

Little did I know the Navy would bring me not only a career but the man with whom I’m about to celebrate a 50-year marriage.

Our journey began by fluke … or was it fate? For starters, my future husband, John, born and bred in Kentucky, wasn’t sent to nearby Navy boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois but to Orlando, Florida, the only Navy boot camp for women then. Next, we arrived at boot camp on the same day: May 25, 1973.

However, the day before, John met a girl on his plane who later joined my company. She told me all about this big, blond guy she hoped to see again but only knew his first name and had no idea what company he was in. Ah, boot camp romances. They were nearly impossible in the military pre-coed 70s, when men and women didn’t share classrooms, gyms, chow halls or even church services.

How to get beyond that obstacle? Cultivate lots of pen pals and weed out the undesirables! To get a letter to its proper destination, a company number was needed. As the cadence caller for my company, I could maneuver our marches within permissible proximity to a brother company. That allowed a glimpse of said number emblazoned on a flag held high as our targets marched by. Soon I had a dozen company numbers. As the “resident writer” of Company 3084, I was elected to pen the prose that would flood us with replies.

But “Operation Pen Pal” was short on stamps and stationery, two prized commodities among those with limited communication opportunities (i.e. prisoners and military recruits). Between three cohorts and myself, we managed six stamps and oversized postcards with an aerial view of Recruit Training Center Orlando; not romantic but it would get the job done. I addressed the postcards, choosing company numbers willy-nilly. I noted our names, our wish for pen pals and signed my name as my company’s cadence caller. (Thus John got to hear me before he ever met me.) Oh, and I was looking for a good-looking guy from New Jersey, 23 or older. One card found its way to the barracks bulletin board of Company 117.

Reading it was its master-at-arms: a good-looking guy … from Kentucky … who was 22. He chose my name, promptly sending me a letter asking if I knew the girl he met on the plane. Well, that’s not all he said. His letter was witty, intriguing and humorous, and I wanted to get to know him better. We exchanged several letters a week, a couple with photos. And each letter I wouldn’t mention the girl on the plane, and each letter he would ask less and less about her.

Soon we discovered that Jewish service was so small, there was no segregation of the sexes. That’s how two Catholics met for the very first time; enjoying bagel and lox while watching a film about Israel. Fast-forward to the end of boot camp and many, many letters culminating in a day of liberty together. John asked me then to visit him in Louisville and I did before heading off to Naval Station San Diego and he to Avionics “A” School in Memphis.

The next two months were a flurry of phone calls and letters but we knew even before then we were meant to be together. On Oct. 20, 1973, John flew to San Diego to slip an engagement ring on my finger and we were married as close to Valentine’s Day as we could arrange on Feb. 9, 1974 in Point Pleasant Beach, by my little Jersey Shore town. In St. Peter’s Parish, used in the 1979 film “The Amityville Horror.” Turned out not to be a bad omen.

Surprisingly, we were only physically together all of 10 days during our courtship. For years afterwards we were often hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles apart. But for us, “absence makes the heart grow fonder” held true. After my three years of active duty in San Diego and Lemoore, California, we decided one full-time sailor in our family was enough. I transferred to the Naval Reserve, finishing up 23 years as a Chief Journalist at NAS Whidbey in 1996. John retired as a Chief Aviation Electronics Technician in 1993. The Navy took us coast to coast and John all over the Far East. Our son was born at NAS Lemoore, our daughter at NAS Whidbey.

And now 50 years have flown by. How could it go so fast? Especially when I remember how slowly those cruises dragged by. Still, the Navy gave us more good times than bad. Like the two weeks in Louisville near John’s high school speaking to teenagers about life in the Navy thanks to its Hometown Area Recruitment Area program. We got to live in Hawaii for four years. Plus the steady income and reenlistment bonuses allowed us to buy our first two homes in our own version of paradise, Whidbey Island.

After the Navy, John graduated from WWU, taught at OHHS, was a volunteer OHPD officer and started Oak Harbor’s first home-based computer business, Computer Clinic. I wrote columns and feature articles and founded the Impaired Driving Impact Panel of Island County, known as IDIPIC, which I ran for 16 years. But we both agree, the best thing the Navy gave us was each other.

I still have that postcard (with its 8-cent stamp). More importantly, I still have my boot camp beau. I’m not a “material girl” but prefer experiences and living in the moment. But there is something I won many years ago that is my most prized possession: the love of the man who became my husband.

JoAnn Hellmann is a longtime Oak Harbor resident.