LOVE and the B-2 STEALTH BOMBER: A Memoir

The truth was soon clear, we were in love. At twenty-five, she lived only blocks from work in the Latin neighborhood of Pico Rivera, California—just east of East L.A. Commuting an hour or more each way from the Inland Empire, I had just started working at this job a few months earlier. Four years out of college in Kentucky, and two years into an aerospace career in California, I was twenty-six—with my roots in a rural rust belt county of southern Ohio. Without delay, we separated from abusive spouses. The enigmatic city girl—who had lived on her own in New York City for two years as a teen—and the country boy from Appalachia, we saw each other, scars and all. In every intimate moment we planned to spend our lives together; even our children found joy in our emerging family. Despite our precarious lives, we had secured good jobs: as she rose from being a lead clerk to a systems analyst position, I was quickly climbing the ranks in engineering. It was 1987, the height of the Reagan Era, and we were working together on the initial production of the most advanced military aircraft in history.