While Lavern Hunter fought for the U.S. Army during World War II, his wife, Nelda, and young daughter, Elaine, lived each day, “waiting for Daddy.”

America honored her living veterans, like Hunter, on Veteran’s Day Wednesday.

In the United States there are 23.2 million veterans, with 1.7 million of them in Texas.

The Hunters, who live in Keene, will observe their 69th wedding anniversary on Nov. 28.

They have known each other since she, Nelda Holmes, was in the second grade in Oilton, Okla.

“I loved Lavern the first day I saw him coming to my school to walk his little brother home,” Nelda said. “As an eighth-grader I was walking downtown with a boy who told me he would do anything in the world for me. I said, ‘Okay, get me a date with Lavern Hunter.’

“Lavern was on a street corner ahead, talking to some boys. My friend called him over and told him something and then walked away. Lavern looked at me and asked me if I wanted to walk down to the church with him.”

He didn’t ask her for a date that night, but eventually he did.

When she was 15 and he was 18, they made a major decision.

Nelda’s father told her his job with Magnolia Oil Company would cause him to be transferred to South Texas.

Lavern said they didn’t want to leave each other, so they eloped on Thanksgiving Day in 1940.

Hunter worked in various oil fields and in shipyards, building destroyer escort ships. When their first child, Elaine, was 5 months old, he was drafted into the U. S. Army.

Nelda and Elaine moved in with her parents in La Ward, while Lavern went off to war.

At Fort Bragg, N.C., Hunter was trained as a gunner on a 240 mm Howitzer. He learned to open his mouth when he fired it so his eardrums wouldn’t burst.

The soldier crossed the Atlantic on the RMS Aquatania, a luxurious cruise ship converted to a troop transport.

“The Aquatania held 10,000 troops, plus the crew,” Lavern said. “Military police stood ‘at ready’ at each gang plank. I remember my assigned quarters location number: G4 starboard. If you forgot your number, you were lost.”

Assigned to Patton’s Third Army, 270 Field Artillery Battalion, Hunter crossed the English Channel and landed in Northern France, having zigzagged to avoid submarine torpedoes.

“Across the Mozelle River near Mertz, France, we were able to take over a German pillbox fortification and fired German ammunition back at the Germans,” he said. “Inside this fort there were tile stairways. It had its own electric generators on top of a mountain. It was well fortified. I remember the dumbwaiters used to bring ammunition up to the pillbox so it could be fired from their guns.”

Nelda wrote her husband faithfully. Sometimes she received letters from him, asking why she hadn’t written.

The next correspondence might say he received seven letters at once.

Elaine faithfully kissed her daddy’s photograph goodnight.

Lavern received a pass to go into Paris. There he bought a beautiful doll with a complete wardrobe for his daughter and a bracelet for Nelda.

“Oh, how Elaine loved that doll,” Nelda said. “All her life she loved it, keeping it in a plastic display case in later years.”

At Christmas 1944, soldiers in the third United States Army received a Christmas card from Lt. Gen. George Patton. Hunter still has his.

On one side, Patton wishes the troops Merry Christmas; on the other, he wrote a prayer:

“Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee of Thy great goodness to refrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crash the oppression and wickedness of our enemies, and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.”

After leaving Northern France, Hunter crossed the Rhine River into Germany. He pulled heavy artillery across on barges, and tanks were driven across pontoon bridges.

German aircraft factories went up in smoke after fierce bombing by Flying Fortresses of the U. S. 8th Air Force.

He said Germany was “down to using youth 15-16 years old” when he took on prisoners at Regensburg, Germany, in a medium stockade, as a guard

“We used them to keep the fire in the barracks because the winter was so extreme. The Blue Danube River ran right down through Regensburg. I was there when we learned that the Germans had surrendered. We were so happy, but we feared we would be sent to Japan next.”

Atomic bombs ended the war and Japan also surrendered. Hunter wrote that he was coming home.

“I was so excited,” Nelda said. “But I didn’t know when he was coming. Every day I went early to the post office there in La Ward. I knew how long it took for them to put the mail up after the mail came in on the train.

“Elaine was in the front seat with me. She was 3 years old by now. I saw a soldier with a bag on his back walking towards us. I was straining to see who it was when she shouted, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’

“She recognized him from his photograph that she kissed every night.”

Nelda parked the car, jumped out, and ran the half block to meet her husband.

As we sat at their kitchen table, she smiled at the remembrance. She touched his hand, and their eyes met.

“When we ran to meet each other, I couldn’t turn him loose. He asked me why I didn’t drive the car. I told him it couldn’t get there fast enough.”

In the years that followed, Lavern’s work took them to many locations.

Nelda was a nurse at Bellaire Hospital in Houston for 22 years, retiring in 1983. They most recently lived in Ardmore, Okla., moving to Keene in 2000.

Their daughter, Elaine, passed away in 2005. Elaine’s daughter now treasures the doll from Paris.

The Hunter’s son, Ronald Hunter, lives in Houston. There are four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

The Hunters say that Jesus Christ has always been the center of their 69-year marriage. They are active members of Keene Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Cpl. Lavern Hunter was awarded several medals, including five bronze stars.

We looked at them as we sat in the kitchen.

“After the French were liberated we made a victory march through villages and cities,” he said. “There was a band playing way behind us. We could barely hear the music for our heels clicking on the streets. It was so wonderful.”

But he felt more than joy that day, he said.

He glanced down. “I thought of those who weren’t marching with us.”

Larue Barnes may be reached at laruebarnes@yahoo.com.