Alice is a native of Texas, generally in and around the Dallas area, and has lived in Pensacola and Tallahassee alternately for the last five(ish) years.  Truth be told, she’s probably spent more time in her car traveling for work and classes between her various residences in various cities and states, than actually being stationary in any of them!  In 2007, she received her Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations from the University of West Florida. She is currently engaged to her sweetheart and soul mate, Josh, a nice Oklahoma boy; the couple is planning their big wedding bash in Dallas in the Fall of 2010 (do we get to wear Stetsons?!?!). She will be attending Marine Corps Officer Candidates’ School in Quantico, VA in June 2009.

The day Alice and I met, we became instantly close – not so much in the best-friends-for-life sense, as in the sitting-on-each-others’-laps sense.  This was because we were both attending a scheduled recruiting event, hosted by our recruiter at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola.  We’d all met up somewhere – a restaurant?  I don’t recall – and caravanned to the base, where we had a Q&A with the flight students on base, and then took turns on the T-6 simulator.  On the way home, several of us had to pile into the recruiter’s car for the drive back.  Alice and I being the only two females, when it came time to double-up two people to the front seat, it seemed the logical approach for the recruiter to appoint us collectively to the “shotgun” seat.  He was so tickled by the sight that he snapped a picture with his camera-phone of me sitting on her lap in his front seat, swearing he’d never show it to his wife.

And that’s how I met Alice.

Throughout the nearly four years since I first (and last, I think) sat on her lap, Alice and I have gone through a lot of unique and… let’s call them “interesting”… scenarios.  Probably the most fun and odd was in Jacksonville, FL, at Mini-OCS, a weekend-long sampler platter of what to expect at the real OCS (“NINERRRRRRRRR!”).  She was my other date to the Marine Corps Ball in 2007 (and we had, without an ounce of prior planning, worn virtually the same dress in opposite shades: hers black with white accents and gloves; mine white with black accents and gloves).  That day, she’d sat with me cheerfully for THREE HOURS at the hair salon, then consoled me on our way home when my hair made me look less like Lauren Bacall than like Jon Benet Ramsey.  When I graduated from the War College in June 2007, Alice drove all the way up from Pensacola to my commencement ceremony in Newport, Rhode Island, arriving the evening before the ceremony, just to watch me graduate following morning.  She began the long drive back home almost immediately after the ceremony ended; she’d driven over 1,400 miles to be there for me, spending less than 24 hours in Newport before heading all the way back home to Florida.  Very few people in anyone’s life would go so far, literally and figuratively, for a friend; only the best and most enduring ever would.

For a few months, she lived in our guest bedroom – though, in reality, it was more of an occasional breezing-through scenario than a living-in scenario!  (She was hardly ever there, and when she was, she cooked and cleaned.  Best. Housemate. EVER.)  In October, in a small measure of returning her many grand and warmhearted gestures of friendship toward me (and Jason) over the years, when she was in a bit of a transportation vs. time dilemma, I offered to drive her to OCS; Jason offered to fly her there.  Next spring, if I have to, I will carry her to OCS.  Nobody embodies honor, courage and commitment more than she; nobody deserves an Marine Corps Officer’s Commission more than she.  I’ve never wanted so much to see any one person succeed in reaching their dreams as I do for Alice. 

She’s the kind of friend who can keep a secret, can dish relentlessly, run an obstacle course and be shopping for shoes an hour later, and can scheme with the best of ‘em (smuggling a roll of duct tape under a dress, for instance…).  When we have a disagreement, or when one of us is about to go a little bit batty, we can just say it to each others’ faces, and within a couple of hours or days at the most, we’re over it and moving on – usually to sushi on Monday nights for a Girls’ Night Out dinner at Dharma Blue’s.  Her patience and determination are remarkable, and the capacity of her heart for love and compassion is boundless.  Her drive and ambition inspire and motivate; you couldn’t ask to have a better person in your life. 

I am humbly grateful that she has chosen to be in mine.