Even from a young age, my mom, she’s always been my hero, someone that I’ve always looked up to with what she’s had to deal with in her life. Losing two husbands, raising five kids pretty much on her own. She’s the strongest woman that I know.
From a young age, she’s always had this hug thing that she’s always done. She reaches her arms out, if you could reach your arms out further than her, that means you loved her more. Well, I didn’t know this at the time because I was so young, she was playing a little trick on us. She would always push forward with them so that makes you have to, in return, pull them back. So no matter what, she’s always gonna have an advantage.
I didn’t realize that at that point, but as I got a little bit older, I started noticing her try to do that, I’m like, “What are you doing?” So, at that point I found out her little trick and I was able to finally reach out further than her.
That was a running joke for a while. Every time we said bye, or whatever, we would do that. It wasn’t no different from my first deployment when I said bye to her that last time. She’d stretch her arms out to hug, and then she gave me this charm. It was a pretty cool charm. It was an angel with its arms spread out, and its wings spread out. Engraved in it it said, “I love you this much.”
That kind of just reminded me of that whole thing she’s done to all of us since we were little kids. I had that charm with me, I still have it today. That thing’s been around the world 2 1/2 times, with me on all 400 convoys around.
It even has the original cordage that it came with. I just kinda loop this through my flak jacket. I had it up in my turret with me on every mission, gotta say it’s my lucky charm. The engraving says, “I love you this much”, and it kind of just, it represents that whole thing that she’s been doing since we were little kids.
