The Armed Forces Day Parade

It was early May of '64 that Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Gilmore, the older ladies in charge at the USO, were going to go to Fort Leonardwood, Missouri for the Armed Forces Day Parade. They invited all the hostesses to go along if they wanted to. I decided to go---I had never been to an army base and I was curious plus I wanted to see the parade. It seems to me that there were only about three or four of us hostesses went. I really enjoyed the parade, all the men in uniform marching in unison and really liked the army band.

After the parade, a soldier came up to our group and it was quite obvious that they knew him real well. He invited us all to go to the NCO Club with him for lunch. I was sitting at the opposite end of the table and was taking in the sights. It was a very nice club and of course it was full of soldiers in their dress uniforms. This is when I knew that I really liked a man in uniform if they were easy on the eyes and wore the uniform well. (I loved Harmon Rabb on Jag, WOW!)

Afterwards we headed on back to Springfield, and the USO. We weren't back long at all when this same soldier came into the club. He sat down at the table that I was sitting at and we just made some small talk and we played a few songs on the jukebox. He asked me out on a date and I thought (gosh, I don't even really know him). So I thought I had a perfect out---I told him that we were not allowed to leave with or date any of the soldiers. He excused himself from the table and was only gone a short time. When he came back he had a big grin on his face and said that I had permission to go out with him. This soldier was David Reinke, known to some of you as dad, grandpa and eventually great grandpa.