wfn.org | Chaplain performs golf-course wedding

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May 13, 2003 News media contact: Kathy Gilbert7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
  10-21-71BP{276}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this story.

A UMNS Feature
By Kathy L. Gilbert*

Blair and Jessica had planned a big wedding. She was going to be a June
bride. 

United Methodist Air Force Chaplain Jack Stanley had planned a nice afternoon
of golf to celebrate the retirement of an old friend.

Their lives intersected on a sunny day in March because Blair (last name
withheld because of an Air Force protection measure) had just received his
deployment orders. 

Instead of a long white gown, Jessica got married in jeans and a sleeveless
top. Instead of a tuxedo or suit, Blair wore his desert camouflage uniform.
Instead of his clerical robe, Stanley wore a golf shirt and slacks.

A golf course at Travis Air Force Base in Solano County, Calif., became a
wedding chapel, and a lot of strangers became the couple's family, friends
and witnesses.

Stanley has a simple explanation: "They were supposed to be married in the
eyes of God."

The couple had tried going to a justice of the peace, but the lines were too
long.

"They weren't supposed to just get married by themselves; they needed a lot
of people to witness the marriage," Stanley says.

For many young couples, weddings became a casualty of war when deployment
orders started arriving earlier this year. Soldiers, sailors, Air Force
personnel and Marines at military bases all over the United States rushed to
the altar before marching off to the war in Iraq.

"I usually refer people to others because I am strict about marrying people,"
Stanley says. "I see 19-year-old people in my office every day who went to
Reno and got married and now are realizing it wasn't such a good idea."

Stanley, who has been an Air Force chaplain for three years, insists that
couples meet several criteria before he will perform a wedding ceremony:
7	They cannot have a rush ceremony.
7	They must be older than 19 (Blair is 20, Jessica is 19). 
7	The couple must have gone through marriage counseling.
7	They must agree on religion.
7	The couple must be planning for children.

Jessica and Blair had been dating for four years, had plans for a big
wedding, had gone through counseling, are both Baptist and plan to have
children.

They had all the right answers, and Stanley says he was running out of
excuses not to perform their wedding.

"The only other excuse I had was I was about to begin a golf tournament!" he
says, laughing.

Blair, set to deploy in two hours, was already locked into the "pax
terminal," a holding terminal on the base. Once a soldier is locked into the
process, there is no coming or going until the airmen get on the plane,
Stanley says.

"I said, 'If you can get here, I will marry you. I don't know what hole I
will be on, but you can jump on a cart and come find me and I will just stop
playing,'" he remembers. 

When Stanley told the staff at the golf course what was happening, excitement
began to build. The wedding plans were announced on a loudspeaker. All the
players gathered around the putting green. Someone in the crowd with a
disposable camera became the wedding photographer.

Stanley suddenly remembered the original reason he was there. He was helping
celebrate the career of Col. Jim Hannan, vice commander of the military
hospital who was retiring. He asked Hannan to start the ceremony.

"Well folks, I've never started a wedding before," Hannan said. "I don't
really know what to say, but we've got a couple here whose wedding has just
been taken from them because of a short-notice deployment. It is only right
that we give them something to remember." 

Stanley arranged the couple and started the wedding ceremony.
"I saw tears well up in their eyes, and it was at that moment that I felt at
peace," he recalls. Not knowing when they would be reunited, Jessica and
Blair needed the bond of marriage.

"In spite of the rush and hubbub, I could see they were absolutely sincere in
their hearts," Stanley says. "I was thinking, 'Who am I to judge whether they
are old enough or mature enough?' My mom was 19 when she got married, and she
lived a long healthy life with children."

It was weird for everybody, but the day was a true blessing, Stanley says.

"That is why I am an Air Force chaplain." 

# # #

Capt. Jack Stanley is chaplain of the 60 Air Mobility Wing and 615 Air
Mobility Operations Group for Travis Air Force Base in Solano County, Calif.
He first told this story in one of the "Letters From Home," featured on
www.umc.org, and later was interviewed by United Methodist News Service. See
his story and other letters from home by military chaplains at
http://umc.org/headlines/military_outreach/letters_home.htm.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org