While the Kosciusko County Veteran of the Month was honored Tuesday for his service to the country, it was his story of how he met and married his wife of 51 years that took the spotlight.
In introducing Richard Lee Harrold as the veteran of the month at the county commissioners meeting, Veteran Service Officer Darryl McDowell said, “Interesting piece here, the longevity, the wisdom and the dedication of a team - what I mean by a team is a husband and wife - to go through a lot of the career moves that you have to go through. This is a case of where you still see ... 51 years of marriage and over half of it has been following him around in service and that’s a big challenge.”
Harrold is the oldest of four siblings, raised in Billings, Mont., from February 1949 until he completed his junior year in high school. Just before his senior year, his family moved to Southgate, a suburb of Detroit, Mich. Before the school year started, McDowell said, Harrold joined the United States Navy Reserves and was able to complete Naval Basic Training prior to his high school graduation in 1967.
“At this point, he decided he wanted to be part of the active U.S. Navy and enlisted and was sent immediately to the Naval station in Philadelphia, Pa., awaiting orders to special skills training following school for Pensacola, Fla. He would visit that location many times through his career because that was the location where he would mostly receive higher-level training,” McDowell said.
During his time in the military, Harrold’s assignments included numerous leadership positions on land and sea. He began in the Philippines, followed by Scotland, Iceland, Spain, United Kingdom, Michigan and finally retiring Sept. 30, 1995, in the Grand Rapids, Mich., area.
At sea he was assigned to the USS Enterprise (CV-65) and participated in two deployments. One to the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean and the second the ship entered the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal during the Libyan crises in 1984, according to Harrold’s biography prepared by McDowell.
Harrold honorably served 28 years, and was honorably discharged in October 1995 with the rank of master chief, receiving many awards and accolades.
Of note, his final assignment in Rota Spain he was selected to become the first command master chief of a newly created command know as the Naval Security Group Activity (NSGA).
“He has made many major memories through his course of his military career, but the one he spoke of and remembers most is during his tour as a recruiter in Flint, Michigan, he recruited his daughter into a four-year ROTC program,” McDowell said.
Harrold and his wife, Patsi Anne, moved to Warsaw in 2015 after the urging of his daughter and her spouse who both worked in the orthopedic industry in Warsaw after her military career.
Richard and Patsi Anne just celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary. They have two children and four grandchildren.
“I am leaving the biggest piece for Richard to talk about - how did this great team come together mid-career of the military,” McDowell said before calling Harrold up to the front of the meeting to be recognized and receive his framed certificate.
Harrold said, “What I was asked to talk about was how we got together. It’s kind of an interesting story.”
After he left Scotland, he ended up in Maryland for more military schooling. His parents still owned the home in Montana, as well as one in Michigan. On weekends, he traveled from Pennsylvania to Detroit, where he had sisters living.
His sisters set him up on a blind date and the date didn’t go well as there were car problems and they were caught in the rain with the top of the convertible down. Patsi Anne would not go out with him a second time.
Harrold went off to Iceland. He was there for four to five months and started getting letters from her and she wanted to reset the clock.
“We agreed that she was going to come up during the summer and was going to go from Detroit to New York, and then we were going to go to Scotland for the date, an actual date,” he recalled.
Harrold got called back to Vietnam, so the date obviously wasn’t going to happen. He worked for the senior chief who saw that Harrold was under some sort of duress. The senior chief asked what it was, Harrold explained it to him and the chief told him he needed to get off the rock that night and made sure he got out of Iceland and headed for New York and Detroit. They met at the airport, went for a ride and decided to get married within a week.
On the following Friday, they were married. They took a short honeymoon to Montana to his family, who didn’t even know he was in the country, let alone getting married. After that, he went back to Iceland and a month later Patsi Anne was able to visit Iceland.
“She’s been with me, and the one beauty of what happened is, we had to work out our problems. After all, we were married on date three maybe,” Harrold said.
At that time, calling home was $13 a minute so they couldn’t call home to talk to their parents. They had to work their problems out.
“I think that’s what made us a very strong unit, is from the very beginning we had to work our problems out,” he concluded.