After Carl Green left the Fort Pepperrell American base in St. John’s, where he was stationed from 1956 to 1958, he purchased a modest engagement ring and sent it back to Newfoundland by mail to a young Sandra Gordon, whom he had dated while stationed in the city.
Along with the ring was a letter he wrote with fingers crossed, asking her to come to the United States to marry him.
She did.
On Friday the couple will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary during a visit to Newfoundland and Labrador. The couple is accompanied by their daughter, Katherine, and granddaughter, Marisa.
“I had a girlfriend who I grew up with, whose name was Margaret Willis, and she lived on Patrick Street and she said to me, ‘Come up to the house. There’s a new Yank in town, let’s look him over.’ That’s how I met him,” Sandra said. “I didn’t like him at first.”
Carl’s charm eventually won Sandra over and the two started dating. Being on the base had some advantages that Carl could use to persuade the young lady — such as a movie theatre.
“That was my ticket,” Carl joked.
Sandra said she loved riding on the bus to the base and going to see a movie with Carl.
“He took me on the base quite a bit because you could go to the movie for a quarter and when Elvis Presley was becoming famous, I got to see his movies before my friends and they were jealous,” Sandra said. “You could ride on the bus to go in and see the movie and come back on the base bus.”
Construction of Fort Pepperrell began in the fall of 1940. Following the start of the Second World War, American troops at Fort Pepperrell numbered more than 5,500 at times. There were another 1,000 troops stationed at Signal Hill to operate anti-aircraft guns and carry out surveillance operations.
After the war, the base was maintained at reduced strength. In 1946 it became an air force base to facilitate operations and maintain communications with the U.S. Navy at Argentia and with Allied nations.
In 1958, the United States began to phase out the base and that’s when Carl was reassigned to California. It was there that he sent for Sandra to join him and get married.
“Before he left he had said, ‘I’m going to marry you and take you home,’” Sandra said. “In my mind I thought, this Yank is out of here and we would never marry, because a lot of Yanks promised to take young women away, but the women found out they were already married.”
Sandra said it was difficult leaving her home, but she wanted to marry Carl. Her mother and grandmother helped her pick out a wedding dress and she packed a few items of clothing and flew to California to join him.
“All I had when I left the Rock was my wedding dress, and a few pieces of clothing and $5 and a few pennies,” she said. “I was 17. My dad didn’t say anything. He didn’t try to stop me, but it took him a long time to like my husband.”
In 1959, Carl left the U.S. Air Force and the couple moved to Carl’s hometown in Florida. There, he joined the U.S. Space Program at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and worked in quality assurance and as final inspector on a number of launches.
“I was on the launch team for hundreds of launches,” Carl said. “Those launches included the Saturn V, Apollo 11 moon landing, first space shuttle and hundreds of Delta ll rockets.”
Carl retired in 2005.
In addition to celebrating their anniversary, the couple is taking Katherine and Marisa to many of the places Sandra frequented while growing up in St. John’s.
Marisa, 23, said this is only her second visit to Newfoundland and Labrador, but she feels like she knows the place well from all the stories she’s been told.
“We’ll be driving down a road and Nan is like, ‘You know what happened at that corner?’ Or she will see a building and say it was where her father took my mother for ice cream.
“For me it’s putting a place to all the stories. I also like hearing all the accents.”
Next week the four plan to attend the Royal St. John’s Regatta. It’s an important event for them, as Sandra’s father, Thomas Gordon, was on a championship team four times. His crew, the U.S. Army Docks Men’s Crew, was inducted into the Royal St. John’s Regatta Hall of Fame in 2002.
Thomas Gordon rowed for the U.S. Army Dock men’s crews from 1944 to 1948. All members of the crew were Newfoundlanders.
In 1944, the crew won its first Regatta championship, and followed it up in 1945. That 1945 regatta was known as the “Victory Regatta” in recognition of the end of the Second World War.
According to the hall of fame induction document, a wild championship race saw two shells colliding when turning the buoys, which allowed the U.S. Army Docks Crew to pull ahead and win the race.
In 1946, the crew lost in the championship race, but returned to win the 1947 and 1948 regattas.
“I remember as a young girl seeing my father getting into the boat,” Sandra said. “Marisa is excited to see the Regatta because I’ve talked a lot about the Regatta and my dad over the years.”
Carl and Sandra are always happy to spend time in Newfoundland and Labrador. When their children were young, they would often spend most of the summer in St. John’s.
But for Sandra, especially, there’s always much heartache when she leaves the province.
“Even though I’ve lived in the United States, my heart is here in Newfoundland. It will always be home,” she said as tears began to well in her eyes. “Even though I have the means to get here when I want, I always think of home. The older I get the more I want to be home.”
