Hi,

This is the story of our lives together, starting with our meeting at the Univ.

I started out to write Story of My Life/Cars I Have Loved but I ran out of steam on the 6th chapter of Cars I Have Loved which can still be seen on my present web page which is still on line. And my dear wife Muriel has been culling and and trimmed copies of our letter written writen over the 60 years of our live together. My mother taught me to write home every week when I was away from home and I/we did . Muriel has read them all of them and gleaned the appropriate parts made typed copies which she had put in some large scrape books. There are 30 of them on our book shelves. She had added photos, postcards and other interesting items as she went along. They will be left to our children and we know, from experience, what will happen to them. Since this is our story, I am changing the name of this story to Our Story, here it is:

Our Story by

Dale and Muriel Fritz

I, Dale, was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in l922. My father was a cowboy and his claim to fame is he was first man to have his heart held in the hand of a doctor and live. His story can be seen on Lucky Cowboy. My mother a school teacher and secretary. Like most couples, in those depression days, they wound up as dry land wheat farmers near a town named Pine Bluffs. Those were tough years but, like most people,they survived. I graduated from High School in Pine Bluffs with no desire at all go go on to college-until almost too late. We sold my Shetland pony and with some help from two uncles, I was able to go. . I enrolled in the University of Wyoming at Laramie, Wyoming with Agriculture as my major. In those days there that was the only thing a farm kid could take. I enjoyed being at College. It was the first time that I could be myself and not a “farm kid” and I made the most of it. Not scholastically, socially. My childhood pal, known by the nickname of Stinkey, also came to Laramie. He had enrolled in an Auto Mechanics School because he wanted to become a mechanic. He was not in the University but he was able to take part in all of the social part anyway. I was glad to have him come because he had a car and, at that point, my mother had moved to Laramie and Stinkey lived with us. Hard to beat a situation like at school. We had a great time and we did not let our studies interfere with our education. One of the professors looked at my school record and he said he would rather hire me as a blacksmith than anything else. I must admit that what I had learned at home on the fame served be better that what I learned at college. I turned out to be an inventor more than anything else and I did not learn that at college. If you are on line you can learn a lot about me on www.wedoweelake.com/~aprotech and see some of the results of my work.

I have been going through a box of old letters and poetry and I have finding some written at the time of our courtship. that got me started on this project. I have been writing poetry since my first case of puppv love. Poems just seemed to flow out of me when I am in love. It did not seem to have an effect on girls in High School but when I got to college it worked wonders. The box of letters brought back a lot of old memories that are worth living again in memory.

I was early in my second year at the University when I met Muriel. She was a freshman. She had grown up on a ranch near Baggs, Wyoming and led a pretty isolated life. The closest neighbor was a mile away. It was 10 miles to the closest town and she went to a one-room school house most of her schooling.

I think it could be said she led a “sheltered” life. To come to the university she lived worked for and lived with a family in Laramie.

I met Muriel on a blind date-not with me. My buddies blind date. The occasion a shindigs called the Sadie Hawkins Day Dance. It came from a cartoon about a hillbilly named Little Abner and he girl friend called Daisy May. For the Sadie Hawkens dance the girls had to invite the men to the dance. Stinky and I made ourseives available and I was invited by a high school classmate named Virginia. Another classmate, Dorothy, arranged for Muriel to invite Stinky. That was the beginning of the best of my life-in the future.

Well, the next thing I knew Muriel and Stinky were going steady. It was a sort of “modified” steady because they both still went out with others on dates. But it did cramp my style. My style was to tell every girl I went out with that I loved them, even on a first date. Muriel knew about that because she was often in the front seat with Stinke when I and my date were in the back seat. That she did not approve of and I ended up saying home when she went on a date with Stinky. However, she complemented me on my dancing because she loved to dance. One time we were all at a dance at the Summit which had a small room off of the dance hall. While dancing with Muriel I steered her back through that small room and--while dancing we kissed. . Well, I want you to know, that was the end of me. I could tell because the poetry began to flow again.

It was not until after the summer vacation that we were both back at the University that we were in contact again. By this time I had a car too. I will put a picture of it here for you to see. A l932 Chevy with a cloth top and a rumble seat. It was the dream car for a college student and it was for me. It was not new and it did have some machnical problems, but I had Stinky to take care of most of them for me. One in particular that I recall. We were driving down the street and suddenly the car just stopped going but the engine kept running, Stinkly got out and looked it over and found the problem right away. One of the rear wheels was sticking out more than usual. We jacked it up and were able to push the wheel back in place. And the car ran fine except a few blocks down the street it did the same thing again. The problem, according to Stinky was the rear wheel retainer. However we reasoned that if every 5 miles we would go around the block to the right, it would push itself back in-for 5 more blocks. When we got tired of doing that we bought the 89 cents retainer and fixed it for good. We also found that we could stretch the MPG by driving up the steep hill just out of town and then coast back when it ran out of gas. We could make it back to a filling station where we would buy a dollars worth of gas, which was usually about all we could afford.

We did not have much money so we could not go very far in it. During that summer I had been working at the University Agronomy Research Farm, which was 2 miles out of.town. The tires were not too good and one of them would usually go flat during the week. When it did I would call Stinky and he would come and get me. Not only that we would put his spare tire on my car and I would run on it the rest of the week-until we need to put it back on the spare rack of his car when we went somewhere on the weekend.. One of the two pictures I have it was taken on Sunday because it shows the front left tire is up on a jack. That means we have not gotten around to fixing my tire and putting it back on it. I do have a second picture of it which I will include here. That is my car.

My Car Stinky and Muriel

Somewhere along the line I had to admit to myself that I was in love with Muriel and I broke the rule--I asked her for a date. She said yes and the next thing I know we are were going steady. Suddenly for me but she did not believe it. At least not enough to say she loved me. Then came Pearl Harbor. We had a date that night and, for the first time, she said she loved me. The best of days and the worst of days were just beginning of life for me. We did become engaged, for whatever that ment at that point in our lives. Not much. I went back home to Pine Bluffs. Dad had had a heart attach and things were rough. We joined the movement to the west coast and moved to Richmand, Calif. I got a job at the Henry Keiser Shipyard in the identification badge department. Then came my call from Uncle Sam and the draft Board. To keep from getting drafted into the army, I joined the Marines.

I enlisted in San Francisco and was sent to San Diego for basic training. I really felt proud to be a Marine and loved it until we arrived, by bus, at the Boot Camp. As I stepped off of the bus some new recruit called out, “YOU’LL BE SORRY” And he was right. There was a lot of “second thinking” going on in that barracks that first night. And some tears, too. Boot Camp seemed to be designed to break you if you could be broken. And work the legs off of you if they could. Not everyone made it but I did. I did not hate Boot Camp. The thing I liked about it was the food. They had all kind of food and lots of it. I could have as much as I liked as long as it ate every bit of it. I asked one of my buddies, who also grew up on a farm, if he hated boot camp. He said, “I loved it, why they did not make you get up until 5:30 in the morning and what they called working was just walking around”. I you want to know what I looked like after Boot Camp just look at the picture of m

About the first thing we did when we finally were allowed to go back into the real world was have our picture taken. At that is it.

After Boot Camp I was one of a group who were sent to Radio School to learn Morris Code and become a Radio Operators. It was a 3 month course taught on the same Marine Base as the Boot Camp training. The big difference was that we now were allowed to go on liberty in the city. Having just been at the University I had no trouble learning everything except the code. We had to be able to copy 17 words per minute, with a pencil, to have a passing grade. I could only do 16 wpm, which meant I was going to have to go into a new class that was just starting and do the whole thing over again. There was one other fellow who also did not pass. His name was Frank Killam. He was a radio repairmen by trade and was from Powell, Wyoming. He did not pass it on purpose because he wanted to be in the radio repair school because that was what he had been doing before he enlisted. He was so mad about it that he refused to pass the code test. I am sure he knew it. The instructor called us in and gave us a couple more chances to pass the test but we didn’t. He got disgusted and just gave us credit for it anyay and let us graduate with out class. Frank did eventually get transferred to radio repair and he was the best man in that section.

Early in the training program we were told that the had 30 Private First Class promotions to be give to the 20 best students in the class. Frank and I were not on that list. I was not on it because I went Absent Without Leave (AOL) and that is a no-no. I did not do it on purpose, of course ..A classmate, Chuck, from the San Francisco, came to me and said he had figured out a way we could fly home, have 22 hours with our families and get back in time to get our Liberty Cards in the box before it is picked up at 2:00 a.m. We did it-all but get back in time. The plane to bring us back was late leaving SF.so we did not make it. When the First Sargent ask Chuck for his excuse for being late, he said he was so drunk when he came in that he could not find the slot in the top of the box. They gave him him two weeks restriction and that was all. When the First Sargent aske me I said the plane was late out of SF and he went straight up in the air. To cut a long story short, I was “run up before the Col., called every name in the book and given 2 weeks restriction. The difference was, mine went on my record and my buddy’s did not. But this does have a happy ending. My buddy and I did not get PFC stripes along with 8 other guys. The 10 of us were sent to Division Headquarters Company and the rest of the class went to Divisions. It was well known that the number one target of the enemy was the radio man with a long antenna sticking up in the air.

We were assigned to the Third Marine Division Headquarters and were sent to New Zealand to for 4 months to complete our training. The reason we were send to there was because the New Xealand troops were in north Africa fighting the war there.. The Japanese army had taken Papua New Guinea which put them only 40 miles from Australia territory. The 3rd Division was overseas for 27 month and took part in campaigns on Bouganville, Guam and and Iwo Jima. We spend a year on Guadalcanal but that was after the fighting for the island was over.

One thing that every service man overseas must have is "a girl he left behind". It is essential to his well being and moral. And I didn't have one. What was I go do. Muriel had continued at the University, graduated and taken a teaching job at Manderson, Wyoming. She had also become engaged to a someone she referred to as “Handsome Ray.” However, since she was the only girl I had ever had I chose to keep her as my “girl I left behind”. I wrote to her as such and she was kind enough to write to me but she did not play the sweetheart role. I wrote poetry from my heart. I became the camp poet and wrote it for some of the guys who would send it to their girls. I do not have copies of all I sent to her but I do have some and I will mark some of the so that you can see them if you like.

Our last battle was Iwo Jima and we were headed for home. We landed in San Diago on the 2nd of May, l945. We spent a week in training on how to act in the US and then we had a 30 day furlough. I tried three time to call Muriel but did not get through so I sent her a telegram, which arrived after I finanlly got through by phone. I have found several letters which we exchanged while I was in San Diago waiting to go one furlough. We were corresponding by mail all this time and I was begging her to marry me. This first letter was written after I had finally gotten through on the phone. In the meantime here is a couple of samples of the poetry..

Stack of letters.

Normally a story like this would end with the wedding because the letter would stop. In this case the letters go on and on. Our division was based at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in Phiadelphia and the whole until was sent there. When my furlough was ended we took up residence in Phil]idenntpha in an apartment. I was assigned to do guard duty at the base which was 6 miles from out apartment. I could come home for one night and then had to be at the base for 2 nights. Most of the letter below were written to each other when we were living 6 miles apart-part of the time. And from the Philadelphia Navy Hospital for a while but I will let the letters tell you about that.

Here's a version you can download: