October 9, 2011
November 9, 2011 will be the fifty year anniversary of my enlistment in the US Navy. I was eighteen, weighed 165 pounds, had dark brown hair and an urge to see what life was all about. During my four-year enlistment I learned:
I had a brain and I could actually learn and enjoy it.
God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are the most important part of my life.
Who my best friend and eternal mate would be.
Why we are here as mortals, and
Why we all have unique, crafted challenges, illnesses, handicaps, mental capabilities, and desires – both good and bad.
Today, I shared this anniversary note in a testimony meeting in St. George, Utah, giving tender thanks to our dear friends, Howard and Cathy Shaffer. They have been with us since the very beginning of our wild and venturous time as team Jacobs. It was Howard who invited me to Church meetings on the USS Hornet while during our two Westpac tours and helped me build a budding testimony of Jesus Christ. He also gave me an invitation to his wedding reception to Cathy Shaffer, my bride’s double cousin. I was late to the reception and just about missed it, but thanks to Cathy’s very “organizing” mother, I was soon moving through the reception line.
I passed through the line and saw an old friend from the Long Beach First Ward, Linda something, or other. I mentally noted that she had nudged (shoved) Jean so hard she almost flew out toward me, saying something like, I know him, he’s single. I really thought she was about sixteen until I walked around with her for a few minutes looking at wedding gifts and wondering what had just run over me. When we got over to her parents, the Holy Ghost (always looking after me) told me that I needed to make sure I followed up on this golden opportunity. She must have liked me a little because she invited me to go chase to bride and groom. The next week I took her to a young married activity in Palm Springs with Harold and Lucille Blevins. We must have looked like we belonged to each other because one of the men began visiting with us and asked how long we had been married. When told that this was our first date, he said, “why, he double toothpicks, I thought you was married.”
A month later, I asked your mother, grandmother, aunt, friend and the love of my life if she would marry me in the Temple of Our Lord. She agreed and eleven months later on May 1, 1965 we went through this marvelous experience and began our lives together. We have had the opportunity of seeing each of the five elements I found in the Navy become integral parts of our eternal friendship. We have been professional educators for forty years, gained bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, enjoyed raising six children, watching the next generation raise twenty six grandchildren, go through several decades of helping people - strangers and family alike – through giving them a place to live, something to eat, a thought of hope and encouragement, a chance to see spirituality in their lives, and a friend.
I owe everything I have, have done, or will do, to my Heavenly Father and my eternal bride. Without God I am no more than the dust of the earth. Without my bride, Jean, I am some inept, wanderer, in the bowels of the confusion and lower life activity that prevails in most arenas on the planet.
So for the record we were all given a mind, we all serve God the Father, we all need to have those special people around us that we call family, we were placed on this earth to be tested (we told God that we could do what he asked of us and we are here to prove it to ourselves) and gain our temporal tabernacle; so we could understand what our limitations, handicaps, live duration, and other life ingredients have to do with our eternal progress. Do we understand why people get cancer; why people do bad things; why some people have, “all the luck”; or why our lives are as they are? No, but we do know that God has blessed each of us with the exact special lives we need accomplish the challenges and opportunities we are given.
God bless each of us as we go through our incredible unique lives.
Gpa Duane Jacobs
Grandpa, pop, friend, uncle, cousin, and all else.