Sunday - August 14, 2005
Video Wedding
So
there I was . . .
That's how all good
sea stories start out. So there I was, sitting in Twenty-nine Palms, California
with a battalion of Marines getting ready to go to war, and my fiancee wants to
get married.
And this is a good sea
story, so that's how this story
starts.
My fiancee, Liz, suddenly
changed her mind about when we should marry. I had suggested many times that we
should get married before I got mobilized but she wanted to wait until I
returned so we could have a nice ceremony and do everything just right. I asked
so many times, and gave so many reasons why we shouldn't wait, that I finally
realized that further requests just might, maybe, kind of could be testing her
patience.
So, coming from a long line
of men who have been husbands, I knew that there is a time to stop asking and
just let things be. I'm pretty sure that this was one of those
times.
But then something happened to
change things. We had one of those magical times that come only once in a blue
moon. For two nights before I left our home in Texas, we stayed in a luxury
hotel on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. What a wonderful romantic place.
Everything went just right, we couldn't ask for a better spot to say
goodbye.
I think that's what changed
her mind. So there I was. Sitting on a slab of cement in the middle of the
Mojave Desert sending text messages back and forth to Liz, when she suddenly
came up with the idea of getting married before I left for Iraq.
Now, did I mention that I come from a long line
of husbands? I think some genetic, survival of the fittest trait surfaced and I
was smart enough to not let on that this was not, in fact, a new idea. But now
it was an idea she likes, so that made it new
enough.
But here's the hard part. I'm
in California training in an infantry battalion getting ready to go to war, and
Liz is in Texas. I can't get leave or liberty. I can hardly get a few hours
off. To top things off, I can't get married over a standard phone because she's
Deaf. If we're going to do this right, it's going to have to be a marriage over
video relay.
Liz has a SorensonVRS
Video Phone, so I thought it should be a snap to connect with the military
version -- if I could find a military video teleconference console. I had heard
vague rumors that the Commanding General had a VTC, but I needed to find it and
get permission to use it.
A few days
later, after Liz had scurried all over Austin, Texas getting the marriage
paperwork completed, I happened to be out of the field and at the main base
computer training center. By now, my search was reaching desperate levels, and
I mentioned my need for a VTC to just about everyone I saw.
But this time Liz and I lucked out.
The training department had access to a very fancy VTC, but they needed
permission to use it for non-work
purposes.
Suddenly things started to
converge, the universe circled around us for a brief time and one by one in
rapid succession everything fell into
place.
Liz found a preacher in Austin
who ministers to the Deaf and whose son was overseas in the Marine Corps. In
fact his son was in the battalion that changed places with my battalion when we
got to Iraq. Pastor Seeger was more than happy to
help.
Then the USMC came through. The
next morning early, I made a special trip just to see what I might need to do to
get permission to use the Marine video relay, and I got caught in a
whirlwind.
I was told to report to a
conference room, and while I sat there I could see a video screen with data
techs from all over the Marine Corps, from Camp Pendleton, California to
Quantico, Virginia working to get me hitched. Hmmm. Maybe they thought it was
a re-enlistment! But I'm here to tell you, I've never been so impressed. Crisp
professional voices, interspersed with images of data engineers with sleek
headsets were coming out of the video relay. I felt like I was at NASA's
mission control.
Maybe they thought
it was romantic and wanted to join in the effort. Maybe they thought it was
good training for future needs. Maybe they just thought it was important to
take care of a Marine before sending him to war. I can't say why for sure, but
I do know this. There I was, sitting in the Mojave Desert and the networking
masters of the USMC were busting down firewalls, bridging across video relay
protocols, and re-engineering the arcane mysteries of a military network just to
get two people in love married.
I can't
say enough to thank the engineers at Sorenson, the engineers with the Marine
Corps, and all the people along the way who did just the right things to make it
happen. Talking with Liz and seeing her exchange vows with me would never have
been possible even just a few years ago. Technology, and the people who make
this technology and make it run, have made our lives richer.
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