• March 25, 1991
• Vol. 35
• No. 11

Called to War on His Wedding Day, Gary Buckholz Comes Home to His' Bride—and the Honeymoon Begins

By Katy Kelly

It was getting dark, and Linda Buckholz was surrounded by hundreds of jubilant families who had come to Langley Air Force base in Virginia to welcome their loved ones home from the war. Still, Linda figured she would be easy to spot: She wore a white damask wedding dress and a garland of silk flowers in her hair—the same outfit she had been wearing on Aug. 7, the day her husband, Air Force T. Sgt. Gary Buckholz, 34, had rushed from their wedding to prepare for his departure to Saudi Arabia. For seven months Linda, 27, had coped with "the strangeness of being married with no husband." Now, as she saw Gary's plane glide toward the runway, she began to shout. Moments later she was clutching him in a tearful embrace. "I didn't believe he was home until I saw him on the ground and felt him in my arms," she says. "The nightmare is over."

That night the Buckholzes finally celebrated the beginning of their marriage. When they met last August in a bartending class, Linda was an Air Force sergeant (now an electronics technician, she left the service last December); twice divorced, she had a daughter, Tina, now 6, from her second marriage. Gary, a 16-year Air Force veteran who worked as a flight line expediter, was a newly divorced father of three: Brandy, now 14, Gary Ray Jr., 12, and Susan, 7. Though their attraction was instant and powerful, Linda was wary. "My last husband left when I was three months pregnant," she says. "I didn't want anyone leaving me again." But Gary was reassuring. "He treated me like I was a person," she says. "The others I had gone out with just wanted somebody to cook and clean for them." After three months of dating, Linda and Gary moved in together, and four months later they were engaged. "After my divorce I'd set my mind to waiting five or six years to remarry," says Gary, "but with Linda, it just felt right."

Five days before the wedding, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Gary's squadron had been put on alert, but on the eve of the ceremony, Linda decorated the reception hall of St. Mark's United Methodist Church with crepe paper and balloons while her stepmother prepared crab dip and wild rice salad for the reception. After the wedding rehearsal, Gary's best man called to say they had been summoned to the base; they arrived to learn that they were going to the gulf. Linda was devastated but pulled herself together and moved the wedding up.

At 8 A.M. the next day, with their families and four friends present, the couple exchanged vows; 90 minutes later Gary hurried back to Langley. At 7:30 P.M. Linda greeted her guests at the church, where she stood with her father at the altar as a videotape of the morning ceremony was played. As guests cut the cake and toasted the bride and the absent groom, Linda left to join Gary on the tarmac, where his unit had been ordered to wait. The Buckholzes spent a chaste wedding night on the concrete, with a duffel bag for their pillow. "I was afraid and falling apart," Linda says. "Gary told me not to worry because he had too much back here that he loved. He said he would return no matter what."

Now Gary, whose devoted bride sent him $200 worth of greeting cards while he was overseas, is savoring the pleasures of home—taking the kids to dinner, visiting the church where he was married, dreaming of making his race-car driving hobby a career when he retires from the service in 1995. Most of all, he is enjoying the healing effects of the thing he missed most when he was a world away: Linda's "gorgeous smile." Fortunately, Linda smiles a lot these days. "Once in a while I have to pinch myself and ask if I'm really married to this man," she says. "I can't believe it's true."

Katy Kelly at Langley