Peter & Jacque(asifkhan) I was at a skating rink one night when I was 16, in 2000, and I saw this young lady. I waited for her to take a break and get a Coke before I made my move. I grabbed her by the hand and said, “My name’s Thomas Peter Headen.” And she said, “My name’s Jacqueline LeFever.” I looked in those big green eyes, and it was a done deal. So we dated. Then, in 1959, her father got transferred to Japan. I decided, Well, I’ll go get her. I joined the Marine Corps, and I said, “I want to go to Japan.” The Marine Corps said, “You’ll go to Japan when we tell you you can go to Japan.” So I went to a base in California.

JACQUE: I dated a Marine while I was in Japan, and I ended up getting married — I guess just because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do. We came back to the States in 2007, but I didn’t know what happened to you.

PETER: Well, I finally got orders to Okinawa. And I said, Oh, boy. I’ll go see Jacque when I get to Japan! I was home on leave — you always get leave before you go overseas — and stopped by to say hi to your mother. And she said right away, “Jacque got married. But here, you can have this picture of her.” I made some excuse that I had an appointment or something — the walls were kind of crawling in on me — and I left. I went overseas for 14 months, and then I came back to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, not knowing you were right outside the gate of that base. I got discharged, and I went home to Maryland. One night the phone rang — it was you.

JACQUE: I came to visit my mom. And I was calling your mother to see where you were, and you answered the phone — I was shocked, needless to say.

PETER: You said, “I want to show you something.” We went to your mother’s house, and here was this little baby. Your daughter was about three months old, and she had those same big green eyes. You went back to North Carolina, and I re-enlisted. I said, “Send me overseas.” I didn’t want to be in North Carolina where you were sitting outside the gate. So I left on August 12 for Vietnam. I came back to the States after 26 months and was stationed at Camp Pendleton, California. One day I was sitting in the barracks, and I decided, I’m going to write her a letter and tell her how I feel, because we were going back to Vietnam.

JACQUE: You wrote, “I just have to get this off my chest — I love you. I’ve always loved you. I have to say it and get it over with, and I’m done.” In the meantime, I’d had another child — a little boy. So there I was in an apartment with two little babies and just miserable, actually. I got married for all the wrong reasons. But I came from a divorced family, and I didn’t want my kids to have a broken home.

PETER: When I came back from Vietnam, I spent 24 hours at home, and then I went to my mother at about 4 a.m. and said, “I’ve got to go to North Carolina.” And she kind of looked at me: “I think you better leave that one alone — she’s married. But I guess you got to do what you got to do.” I said, “Yeah, I got to do what I got to do.”

I sent you away.

---