JOHN AND SUE - NOVEMBER 1956

The Football Player Turned Sailor 

and His Goody-Two-Shoes

    Here is the story of the Sailor who really had a hold on my heart before he joined the USN...he just didn't know it!  He later liked to tell that I chased him until he caught me!  Neither of us thought our mothers were very wise when earlier they had tried saying things like, "Why don't you go out with that John Moore?" and "Sue Libby seems like a nice girl."  This was before John quit school at the end of our junior year of high school to join the USN.  (One of the smartest moves he made was to take his GED in the spring of 1957 so he graduated before the rest of us did!) 

    In the fall of 1956 my mom came home from Ladies' Bible Class saying that John was in the hospital with another bout of dislocated shoulder and she had his address so she was going to send him a card.  You must realize that was in my mother's nature plus she'd had two Navy sons in WW2 and her heart was still with the Sailor boys.  Our football team was doing so well that fall that I decided I'd do a good deed too, by writing a letter to John telling him about the team since I knew it would be in interest to him.  He later said he should have realized he was being railroaded!  I, of course continue to protest each time I hear that comment, by saying, "It was no such thing!  I really was just trying to be nice!"  By that time I had given up on his ever considering thinking of me as a girlfriend…or even a friend! 

    Later that fall he had a brief furlough at home and on one of his first days he decided he'd come to Bangor High School and show us all, teachers and students alike, what he looked like in his dress blues!  He now tells how he came by Mr. Noyes' 4th period study hall, looked in the window of the door and caught my eye and thought, "I wouldn't mind being seen with her while I'm home on leave!"  That afternoon as I stood ironing, the doorbell rang and I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny if it was that John Moore?" as I went to answer.  It turned out to be that John Moore and he spent as much of the rest of his leave with me as time permitted and the rest, as they say, is history! 

    Because he was in the Navy most of our dating was through letter-writing and phone calls...the time I received a letter from him when he called me by his ex-girlfriend's name was one time when he almost saw smoke out of my ears that went from my home in Maine to his ship in Virginia!  The next time was when he wrote telling me about all the times (!) he and a very attractive female friend of ours (a year younger than I) went shopping around the Boston area!  She lived in Brookline, MA. while he was a patient at Chelsea Naval Hospital recuperating from surgery for continuing trouble with shoulder dislocation...he had given it all for the Bangor High School team, y'know! One BIG consolation I had was knowing that with a plaster half body cast, it let him have only one arm free, so he couldn't do much hugging very easily! Ha!  No, the real consolation was in my knowing I was his first choice…although that little niggling insecurity kept trying to get its ugly way!  In the long run real love won that battle and as we look back, we have often realized that our marriage and life have been guided and planned by Someone much higher than any earthly being. 

    Well, there you have the story of how two teens from Bangor, Maine, started their life together, even though one had said, "Aw, Mom, she's a Goody-Two-Shoes," and the other had said, "But Mom, you don't know his reputation!" 

Happy 56 years today, John E. Moore,

My Football PLayer TurneD Sailor Boy!

Who'd-a-thought-it?