My Parents 70th Wedding Anniversary Tribute

A 19-year-old United States Air Force airmen, a 20-year-old WAF (Women in the Air Force) and a group of friends met at a junior college near Travis Air Force Base (AFB) in Fairfield, California in 1953. He played French horn in Travis AFB's band. She was a squadron supply clerk. He remembered her. She vaguely remembered the musician who, in her opinion, was silly and joked too much. He was care free. She wasn't interested. As an athlete, she envisioned marrying a tall basketball player, not a short musician. They weren't mutually attracted to one another. So consequently, they went their separate ways.

A year or so later, she was stationed at March Field near Riverside, California. She visited her mother, who lived in Los Angeles. The young WAF decided to make the Air Force her career. Thus, this daughter planned moving from base to base with her mother so they could travel around the world together.

Determined to initiate the process of her mother becoming her military dependent, the young WAF boarded a bus that would transport her from Los Angeles to March Field. While sitting on the bus en route to March Field that day, she saw the back of a man's head sitting a few rows in front of her. “That's the man I'm going to marry,” she inexplicably said in her heart. Up to that point she was shy. But when the bus arrived at Riverside’s bus terminal, she generated enough boldness to approach him. “Excuse me, sir,” was her opening line. “Can you tell me what time it is?” He told her the time. He asked this attractive, five-foot-eleven, statuesque ebony beauty if she wanted a cup of coffee. She consented. During coffee he asked for her phone number. Days later, he called the barracks where her squadron was housed and asked her out. She accepted. He was drawn by her beauty and innocence. She thought he was handsome and outgoing. They started dating. In process of time, the couple surprisingly learned they both knew “Palmer,” the mutual friend who introduced them a year or so earlier at that junior college near Travis AFB in Fairfield.

Was it coincidence or Providence which scripted a second impeccably-timed rendezvous? It had to be the latter! For who but God could have planned that chance meeting months later. They both happened to be stationed at March AFB. They both happened to decide to go to Los Angeles. They both happened to be in Los Angeles at the same time. They both happened to schedule the same Los Angeles to Riverside bus route. They both happened to be on the very same bus. And they both happened to be seated in a way where she could see him.

Thus, Ronald Frank Owens and Dora Lee Elizabeth Holmes fell in love. They eloped to Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday, August 7, 1954.