I met Jane at a dance. She was as light as a feather on the dance floor and seemed very mature and proper. She was a new convert to the Church and was divorced with two children about four and five years old. Kim was the youngest and had beautiful red hair down to her shoulders. Steve was a very active child that seemed to be into everything. A trip to the grocery store would produce some surprises at the checkout stand if Steve was present. Jane had been in an abusive relationship with an alcoholic and had escaped Wyoming to San Diego for survival. I began to think of her in terms as part of my family.

We had not resolved any issues about permanence at the end of my training and my first field assignment was to install a graphics film recorder at Rocketdyne, a North American Aviation division manufacturing rocket engines for the space program. Rocketdyne was located in Canoga Park, north of Los Angeles. I was told that follow-on locations for equipment would be near Burbank airport at Lockheed Missiles and Space, so I might as well look for semi-permanent lodging.

I left my heart in San Diego; so I looked for every excuse to come back on business and spent many hours driving through rush hour traffic to San Diego on Friday nights to see Jane. Distance made our passion grow hotter and so I proposed that she move to LA so we could prepare to merge families. I found an old home to rent that backed up to the Ventura Freeway at the Reseda exit. For the next three weeks I slept in the little bunkhouse at the corner of the big house. My mother began to prepare Dee for the wedding by making her a special dress and an identical dress for Kim. We were married by the local Bishop in a civil ceremony and we began to live as a married couple with three children: ages four, four, and five. There was an eighteen month span from the youngest to the oldest. There were now five of us.

Jane and Leon
Steven Kim Dee