Terrie in Hawaii — the April 1971 R&R

Terrie on the balcony of the Waikiki hotel during the April 1971 Hawaii R&R, smiling for the camera in a floral shirt-dress, the high-rises and lagoons of Waikiki spread out behind her under a hazy Pacific sky. She flew from Maryland — where she was finishing at the University of Maryland — to meet Charlie on his one week of R&R from Vietnam, on the reduced “Mrs. Eesley” fare the letters had arranged.

It is the same balcony where Charlie stands in his photograph, and — tellingly — the same floral dress she is wearing in the photograph of her arriving back home from the trip, the detail that ties the two ends of the journey together. The trip is the midpoint of the Vietnam-letters story, four months before the August 1971 wedding.