“I was in construction pretty much all my life. I spent my final six years in Iraq, doing work to support the military. I went over there to get some extra money to build up for retirement. My wife stayed here. She went through a hurricane by herself. When I got a chance to talk to her on the phone, she told me, ‘We got a little roof damage.’ I didn’t realize it took the whole roof off and everything. But she took care of it by herself. Didn’t want to worry me.
“I came home two times during those six years. The third time was final. Near the end, I couldn’t wait to get back. We did a lot of things together for a while. Then you fall back into your routines. She takes care of a woman in Chambers County whose husband died. She stays with her three days at a time, or longer if they need her. And I like to get up in the morning and go riding. But we enjoy traveling together. We tent camp. We’ve got our national parks pass. We just got back from a trip through 22 states. We put about 8,000 miles on our car.
“A couple years ago, we went to the Smoky Mountains and all the way up into Pennsylvania. We would camp and hike for three days, then move on to the next place. When we got back home, she said, ‘You know, in the 30-some years that we’ve been married, we did more talking in those two weeks than we have in all our years of marriage.’ And she was right. There was nothing there but nature and us. We would sit down, take a break, and have some real good talks. That was nice.”
— Thomas Vargo