Coronado High School • Lubbock, Texas

Memories of Debbie

Debbie Muncrief - 1978/1979, my senior year

This is me, releasing after all these years.

There are so many vivid memories! What would you expect, I guess, from someone you cared enough about to want to marry, and keep thinking about & missing years after the relationship ended? (Obsessed, I guess. My one biggest regret in life was the end of that relationship because I went into the military...) She had the biggest single influence on me, more than anyone else in my life.

So - why so obsessed?
I really don't know. All I know is that she made me very happy, wanted to be with me, loved me. We never used the word 'love' with each other - each of us coming from broken homes, we knew it was such a serious word, and we wanted it to be real. She created such a great feeling in me just by holding me, intoxicated me just by being near. Being apart created the extreme opposite - utter sadness, depression. The night before I went to Lackland we went out together after I got through packing and began talking about what was going to happen to us, and I told her that I loved her very much and she told me we had loved each other all this time, but it took my leaving to make us admit it. I left for Lackland AFB, Tx the next morning. The hard truth is that while I was away following my future, she met someone else she liked. I was miles away.

Even that didn't matter! But she refused to continue any relationship with me; I've never known why... fear of me leaving, and getting her heart broken all over again, perhaps? I had planned to come back and ask her to marry me after I returned from my Air Force obligation. I lost track of her, where she was, didn't know if she had married (this was before the internet made it easier to find a person). By the time she was old enough to marry she had gotten over our relationship, but she left a mark on me for life. I discovered later she married 8 years after high school. 8 years... was she waiting for me to come back? I'll never know, I guess. (Update: I found a Dec. 20, 1986 Texas Tech commencement program that shows she went to college after high school, and obtained a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics, major in Food and Nutrition - maybe hoping to work at a hospital?)

During Air Force Basic Training
I wrote Debbie a lot while I was in basic training, she wrote me back. I sent her a bunch of depressing letters; I felt really depressed without her. That probably had as much to do with her breaking up with me shortly before I came home on Christmas leave as anything. After I arrived at my first training base (Keesler AFB, Biloxi, MS), I had gone shopping for her - I bought a gold ring that said "LOVE" and had a tiny diamond chip in the 'o', plus a car stereo for the car her father had bought for her. I was going to give her these items for Christmas when I finally came home on leave.

The Break-Up
I was talking to her on the payphone one evening (the only way I could at the time), she asked me 'did I remember so-and-so that she had mentioned before from church', and mentioned that he liked her. I laughed - of course! She was so beautiful and wonderful that ANYone must like her! Then she dropped the bomb - 'I like him too'. I felt like someone was choking me; she just told me that she was breaking up with me. I remember admitting there was nothing I could do since I was hundreds of miles away. The rest of the conversation is a blur; I was hurting so bad it is still distorted to this day. I do remember calling my mother and numbly telling her Debbie had broken up with me, and her expressing sympathy.

I came home on my first official leave since I had departed Lubbock - the first thing I wanted to do was see Debbie. I did eventually end up at her dad's house, after I discovered she broke up with the guy she broke up with me to be with. We were talking in her bedroom and I noticed a piece of paper lying on the floor, completely out of place since the rest of the house was clean. I picked it up, but I read it before handing it to Debbie - it was from the other guy. It said something about how he hoped he had the strength to not be mad at "me" for being everything to Debbie that he couldn't be. I think she left the note on the floor "accidentally on purpose". I'm not sure why, because she refused to get back together with me. She would not accept the ring I bought for her, (I gave it to my little sister) but she did accept the car stereo, which I installed in her car for her. She played two pieces of music she liked on it for me - "Children of Sanchez" by Chuck Mangione, and a song from "The Muppet Movie" - "The Rainbow Connection" sung by Kermit the Frog.

I tried to move on. Loneliness drove me out to meet other people. At that point, I met my wife-to-be. And I must say, she makes me happy! We have a beautiful family together. But even after our marriage, I continued to have a truck-sized hole in my heart that only Debbie could have filled. Can ever fill. The hole is still there to this day.