Wedding Photo

My duty station after basic school was the US Army Artillery and Missile School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. After graduating in the spring of 1964, I reported into my first permanent duty station at Camp Pendleton, California. I was assigned to "India" Battery, 3d Battalion, 11th Marines, as a Forward Observer. That was a very enjoyable time in my life as I learned my profession and started on the road to understanding what it was to be a Marine. Many of the details of 1964 and 1965 are in my book; there are some excerpts from it on this site, you might be able to borrow it from the library, or (if you want to make me rich) you can buy the thing.

To the point here, it was during that period, only a few months before boarding ship for Okinawa and Vietnam, that I met Angela Forcella in Laguna Beach, California. With no clue that we might shortly be separated, we made plans to marry in June of 1965. The Marine Corps had other plans, and when they became evident, we opted to marry early. Thus, here we are on May 6, 1965, posing in our best clothes beside my candy apple red, 1964 Plymouth Valiant. We were just married. Besides us, there was the priest, the best man (Dan Gist - a good friend of mine from the UCLA NROTC) and his mother. And this is THE (one and only) wedding photo. So don't complain to me about it having rotten quality!