This newscast is updated weekdays at 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm, and 6pm. Time now for StoryCorps' Military Voices Initiative - recording and sharing the stories of service members and their families.
Today, a love story that began in a military band. Since the Revolutionary War, America's military bands have entertained troops who were deployed far from home to play at funerals for fallen veterans and to march in celebration after battle.
They were trumpet players, and it marked the start of their musical careers and their romance. But when I was in class, all I did was get sleepy. My band director told me, why don't you get into the Air Force band? In the '70s, there weren't many women trumpet players. M GREEN: When our first sergeant told us that you were coming, he got all the guys together, and he said, there will be no swearing. There will be no mistreating. There will be no disrespect of this young person.
They had a hole in the side of the plane for men, 'cause the planes are built for men, period. So there were, like, three females in the whole band. But I heard you play the solo, and your trumpet sound won me over.
I'd never had a steady girlfriend before. I might have just turned And we were playing a concert in a high school in Denver, and I saw you looking at me. I looked in your hazel eyes, and I thought, wow. I think I finally asked you out the next day, and I said, have I got a deal for you.
