Air Force veterans from Logansport found love in military
LOGANSPORT, Ind. (AP) - Kathie Munson didn't want to go on the blind date, but she had already promised her roommate.
It was January 1969, and she was stationed at McGuire Air Force Base in eastern New Jersey. She had just finished basic training and was on her first real assignment of her military career, working in administration for the U.S. Air Force.
And while Kathie said she couldn't remember the movie that was played that January night, she did remember being swept off her feet by a young Air Force security police officer named Stanley Dymek. Dymek had just given Uncle Sam a year of service in Vietnam and said he wanted to be stationed stateside closer to his hometown of Bronx, New York.
After six months of dating, Stanley broke the news to Kathie.
"He ended up telling me he got his orders to go to England," she said. "We weren't even thinking about getting married at the time, but it was something that just happened."
So that July, Kathie Munson became Kathie Dymek, and the pair began their married life at Royal Air Force Lakenheath near Suffolk, England. Kathie said their experience in England was interesting at best. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, it was her first real taste of foreign living, and she said she didn't quite know what to expect.
"My first time walking down the street, I heard a siren," she laughed. "I had seen so many WWII pictures where the siren goes off, and so I was about to hit the ground. Turns out, it was just a normal siren."
All in all, the Dymeks spent five years in England before coming back to the United States. Around 1976, while the couple was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Kathie found out she was pregnant with their son, Michael.
Back then, military pregnancies weren't exactly met with congratulatory messages.
"I was one of the first people that didn't have to ask to stay in the military when I got pregnant," she said. "Prior to that, military pregnancies were so unusual, so you had to ask permission."
That sort of thinking is what Kathie said military life was pretty much all about. Both of them said they were taught that military life always came first, even if that meant sending your son off to stay with relatives while you served your country.
"We had one week where Michael had to be farmed out," Kathie said. "Stanley was in temporary duty in the States, and they wanted me to go to Belgium. I had to find somebody for Michael to stay with, so he was basically parentless for a week."
But the rest of the time, it was always the three of them, traveling the world one base at a time. Warner Robins, Georgia. Incirlick, Turkey. Ramstein, Germany. Wherever they moved, they moved together. In the late 1980s, the Dymeks finally moved back to the United States for good. They were stationed at Grissom Air Force Base in Miami County, where they retired together in 1991.
And this past September, the three of them were back together for a very special military event.
The Honor Flight Network is a nonprofit that, according to its website, gives veterans the opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. to honor the services and sacrifices of themselves and their comrades. In Indiana, flights leave from Lafayette, Huntertown, Plainfield and Evansville. For Kathie, September's Honor Flight was doubly special.
"My birthday was September 25," she said, "and we left on September 26. It was a very good birthday present."
Stanley was impressed by the crowd of people that welcomed them, both in Washington D.C. and when they got back in Lafayette.
"It was unbelievable," he said. "And when we got home, I thought all of Lafayette was there."
It was a long way from McGuire AFB, from that movie theater where they first met. But both of them said that if given the chance, they'd do it all over again.
"It's been an interesting life," Stanley said, "a really interesting life."
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Source: (Logansport) Pharos-Tribune, http://bit.ly/2faRWbb
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Information from: Pharos-Tribune, http://www.pharostribune.com