In Love and War

As Lee Page sits in his favorite recliner he seems content.

He has just come from church in his native Halltown and he kicks off his shoes before telling his story.

His gray hair is combed neatly, parted on the side. His strong features match his strong stature. But the years of hard work have not hardened him. He has a smile on his face that instantly makes you feel at ease. The few wrinkles around his eyes might be from stress, but they are probably from laughter.

His wife, Jan, sits in her own favorite chair. She has hair that is graying as well, and a few wrinkles show on her face also. She says that most of them came from her “kids.”

She was a schoolteacher for 29 years, a majority of that time spent teaching first grade at Red Bay School, and is now retired. They both settle in to tell their story: the story of how they met and how their relationship survived Lee’s tour in Vietnam.

They were like many from this area who lived from letter to letter, day by day, and made it through against the odds.

She was a cheerleader at her junior college. He was a former high school football star. They knew some of the same people, but they didn’t know each other. However, all of that was about to change. Through chance these two college kids met at a homecoming dance, and the rest is history – quite literally.

Jan’s mother, Olene Seal, recalls Jan’s reaction after that very first blind date on January 18, 1969.

“She came into mine and Pie’s bedroom and jumped into the bed, right in between us,” Seal said. “She said ‘Mother, he’s the most wonderful boy I’ve ever met.’”

And apparently he was. The two continued to date steadily for the next year. Lee was finishing a two-year degree in diesel and heavy equipment at Northwest Technical School in Hamilton and Jan was completing her basics at Northwest State Community College in Phil Campbell on her way to a teaching career. They were serious about one another, but didn’t rush into any long-term plans.

“We put our plans on hold,” Jan said. “We had college to think about.”

However, something much bigger than college was about to change everything for them.

Lee completed his two-year degree, and, at this point, the Vietnam War was in full swing. Lee and Jan felt the effects of the war: they had already witnessed many of their friends being drafted, and according to the couple, if you didn’t go to college when you finished high school, you got shipped out. This happened to several people they knew.

But in April of 1970, the Vietnam War reached closer than they had ever wanted.

“I got my draft letter in the mail and can still remember what I read,” Lee said. “Your friends and neighbors have selected you to serve in the United States Army. Please report to the Russellville Greyhound Bus station.”

“I thought, ‘some friends and neighbors I’ve got,” Lee said. He said that they included that part in the letter because people in the community where you lived were who made up the local draft board. And it was also supposed to soften the blow.

Lee boarded the Greyhound on May 11, 1970, that took him to Montgomery, Alabama, where he would get his physical, but recruits were needed so badly that the physical wasn’t all that rigorous. “They weren’t turning many people down,” Lee said.

After his physical, he was led to a small room with a cluster of American flags in the middle. Standing alongside men he had never met before, Lee took his oath and was sworn into the U.S. Army.

From Montgomery, Lee flew to Atlanta and then on to Ft. Bragg, N.C., for eight weeks of basic training. Here Lee learned basic armed forces training as well as jungle and survival skills. He also received his immunizations for traveling overseas.

In the first few days there, Lee took tests that would determine his military occupational specialty (MOS), which was the job he would’ve been best suited for. At the end of basic training he learned that his MOS was 62F20, which is an engineer/crane operator. Lee’s two-year degree in diesel and heavy equipment played a major role in being assigned this MOS, and it ultimately kept him from being assigned to the front lines once he got to Vietnam.

During Lee’s basic training, Jan was home in Russellville. She had graduated from Northwest State Community College and was spending the summer with her family and preparing to move over to Florence where she would be attending the University of North Alabama majoring in elementary education.

“I was just working around the house, helping my parents, spending time with my family, and getting ready to go to school,” Jan said. “And Lee and I wrote letters back and forth the whole time.

“Sometimes Lee might’ve gotten to call on a Saturday night, but that was rare. It was mostly just letters,” Jan said.

After his basic training, Lee received two weeks of leave before he reported to Ft. Stewart, Ga.

While Lee was stationed at Ft. Stewart, Jan began her first year at UNA in August of 1970. She moved to Florence and lived in Rice Hall on campus. With the hustle and bustle of college, Jan was able to find friends that helped keep her mind off the war and the fact that Lee would have to leave soon. They were able to see each other some, but it was still lonely.

The mood on campus at the time was tense.

“It was like a white elephant was sitting in every room,” Jan said.

The war seemed to touch everyone and affected everything.

The day finally came when Lee received his orders to go to Vietnam. He was allowed a 30 day leave before he had to ship out, and Jan and Lee spent as much time together as possible.

“We went to movies and visited with friends,” Jan said.

The night before he had to leave, Lee and Jan went to see Love Story. Friends that had gone with them said that watching Jan and Lee sitting there in the movie theater knowing Lee had to leave the next day was even sadder than watching the movie. That night Jan also gave Lee a St. Christopher pendant (St. Christopher is the patron saint of travel) and told him, “I can’t go with you, but I will pray for you every day.”

Lee didn’t want his parents to have to take him to the airport, so Lee’s best friend, Johnny Weatherford, and Jan drove him there. With tear-stained faces, both Jan and Johnny watched Lee get on the airplane and fly away to a foreign land to fight in a foreign war. It’s was April 1, 1971 – April Fools Day. But there was nothing funny about it.

Lee boarded a plane with people he had never met. “It wasn’t like in the movies where everyone is cutting up,” Lee said. “We were somber.”

After a grueling flight the soldiers reached Saigon. When they stepped off the plane, the smell almost overpowered them. It was the most putrid smell Lee had ever come in contact with and something he will never forget. “It was a mixture of raw sewage and Vietnam cooking,” Lee said. “Even 37 years later I can still remember it.”

That night they were given a pillow, a bed sheet, and about four hours of sleep. The next day Lee was assigned to the 403rd Transport Company stationed about five miles from the demilitarized zone (DMZ). He was transported from Saigon to Phu Bai where he waited for three days for someone to take him to his station.

“I finally got tired of waiting,” Lee said. “I took my duffle bag and got out on the road and asked everyone who came by if they were going to the 403rd.”

Finally all the asking paid off. Lee found a group going that way, and when he arrived he was assigned his MOS. Because this job description entailed crane operation and the operation of heavy machinery, Lee was assigned to offload heavy equipment and artillery.

“I unloaded every caliber of ammo there was,” Lee said.

This would become his job for the next seven months.

Back home, Jan was starting her new life as a schoolteacher. She graduated from UNA in June of 1971 and was immediately offered a position as a second grade teacher at West Elementary School in Russellville. She moved back home with her parents and tried to adjust to life in the real world. “I felt very lonely,” Jan said. “I had great support from mine and Lee’s families, but I really missed the support of my girl friends at college.”

Jan’s anticipation grew. All around her she had friends who were getting married as she anxiously awaited the arrival of a letter.

“I wrote Lee a letter every single day that he was over there,” Jan said. “We talked about normal things: what he did at his job, what I was doing at mine, which sports team was winning at the time.”

Jan even sent Lee cassette tapes of Alabama football games that she taped for him to listen to, and sometimes she would include a personal message along with it. And, as to be expected, they also talked about their future. “We talked about marriage and what we would do when Lee got home, but we still kept things loose.”

Jan had been receiving a steady stream of letters and then, unexpectedly, they stopped.

“I was beside myself,” Jan said. “No one had heard from Lee. Not me or his family.”

Three weeks went by and still they heard nothing. Jan was doing everything she could to keep herself occupied, but it was hard. After school one day Jan was returning home and hoping desperately for a letter to be in the mail from Lee. As she topped the hill near her parents’ house she noticed Lee’s car sitting in the front yard. Jan assumed that Lee’s younger brother had come to town early to take his driver’s test and had stopped by to see her, since he had been driving the flaming red ’67 Ford Fairlane in preparation for getting his license.

She walked in the front door but didn’t see anyone. As she headed toward the kitchen she felt her heart stop as Lee suddenly appeared in the doorway.

“I fainted right there,” Jan said.

She couldn’t have been happier.

Lee was actually on a two week “vacation,” and he hadn’t been able to let anyone know about it because during the three weeks prior he had been sent over the DMZ for temporary duty (TDY) and wasn’t able to write or receive his mail. He didn’t know where he was and the surroundings were very dangerous.

“There were times when North Vietnamese soldiers would be 50 feet away from us,” Lee said. After this experience, Lee was glad to visit home.

After he returned Lee was assigned to be the driver for the Jeep convoy carrying commanding officers. This remained his position until the 403rd stood down in January of 1972. Lee wrote to Jan telling her that it looked like he would be coming home soon.

“I didn’t know when it would be, but I just wanted to be near the phone in case he called,” Jan said. On February 11, 1972, the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) and the faculty at Jan’s school were holding a talent show, but Jan told the principal that she couldn’t be there. She was still waiting on the call from Lee. Sure enough, that night the phone rang and it was Lee.

“I told Jan that I could only make one phone call and to tell my parents that I would be in Birmingham at 6 a.m. the next morning,” Lee said.

Jan called Mr. and Mrs. Page and they picked her up at 2:30 in the morning to get to Birmingham and wait anxiously on Lee’s flight.

When they got to the airport and Lee’s scheduled plane landed, they watched passenger after passenger get off the plane with no sign of Lee.

“My heart just sank. I thought he had missed his flight,” Jan said. But finally, the last passenger emerged and it was Lee. He climbed down the stairs and kneeled to kiss the ground.

Finally Jan and Lee were able to begin preparations for their future. And thanks to the letters, tapes and enormous amounts of faith and love, there was a future for them.

Their relationship stood the test of separation and survived the Vietnam War.

They have been married now for 35 years, and the tests they endured then prepared them for the tests and trials they have faced together since then.

They have gone through hardships with their jobs, they have both battled health scares, and they have dealt with the ups and downs of marriage. Not everything in their life has always been steady, but the love has.

And that’s what matters most.