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The Meeting (How two homes became one) |
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After completing his pilot training in Pensacola, Florida and Corpus Christi, Texas in January 2004, Chris moved into a small residence on Forbes Street in Jacksonville, Florida. His address was 2231 Forbes Street.During this time, Katie was busy at work finishing her doctoral training at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. In the summer of 2006 she packed her belongings and brought her three dogs, Gouda, Sushi and Nasia (nay-ja) to Jacksonville. She searched through 40 some homes until finding just the right one. It was a two story house in historical Riverside, just south of downtown. The number on the front of her mailbox was 2237.
So, the table was set, but it would take a few months to get the happy couple to finally meet. As Katie was moving into her new/ old house (built in 1907) Chris was going off to “save the world” on a two month deployment to Japan as a P3-C Orion pilot. Katie spent the summer re-decorating and meeting the neighborhood. She learned little from the neighbors about the mysterious Navy pilots living next door, as they were fairly quiet and mostly kept to themselves. Whispers and rumors were all that Katie could gather, and that is as far as it would go for quite awhile.
Finally, in late August Chris returned from Japan to his quiet Riverside home. Within the first week back, he had noticed that a new neighbor had moved in. He also noticed that that neighbor may be a very attractive single woman. This was a point of interest on which he quickly questioned his roommate. Unfortunately, his uninformed roommate indicated that he thought that the single lady next door was not at all single, though she was in fact attractive.
And the summer turned to fall, and Katie continued working, and Chris continued working, each never really knowing of the other. Until it was almost too late. December was fast approaching, and Chris was due to go on a six month deployment to Italy. Because of the timing of the deployment, his squadron held a Christmas party on November 17th.
On that same day, the 17th of November (Sadie Hawkins Day), Katie had a friend in town, and the two ended the evening entertaining themselves and others on her front porch. Late in the evening, Chris arrived home from the party, and as he walked from the taxi to his front door, he heard the words that would change two lives forever, “Hey neighbor, come join our party.” Being the gentleman that he was and is, he did not turn down the invitation, in fact he accepted with a smile, walked up Katie’s three front door steps, opened the door and met the woman who would one day be his wife.
