The Grand Proposal
The first story begins with a man named John, a postgraduate-student living in the DC area, waiting patiently for someone to call his own.
One night, John was invited by some of his good friends, Jack and Michelle, to a party at their house for their single friends. It was at this party where he first met Virginia, a Brit nannying in the United States. The two hit it off at the party, and before they knew it, two years of dating had flown by, and Virginia, or Ginny, as he calls her, had to fly back to England because her visa was expiring.
John was very disappointed that she had to leave, as he could really see a future with her. After thinking it over some more in her absence, he decided that he wanted to propose, but found the ocean in between them a barrier to do so.
However, John, who was a very creative man, teamed up with his good friend Jack, who happened to be extremely gifted with the technology of the time and had helped to introduce the couple. Together, they began to scheme and came up with a plan much more enticing than just picking up the phone.
The plan began when John decided to send Ginny a care package filled with little gifts such as champagne, chocolates, candles, bubble bath, a romantic novel, a copy of the newest disney movie – The Little Mermaid – and a love letter introducing the package and the new movie that he had recorded off of one of the local TV stations.
When Ginny recieved the package almost two weeks later, she enjoyed the contents immensely and was especially eager to watch the newly released movie.
After the first twenty minutes of the movie, a placard came across the screen that informed the viewer of a news report about a major fire that had just broken out in downtown Washington, D.C. The news report stated that the fire was not yet under control; after this, the movie resumed.
About fifteen minutes later, another placard popped up on the screen, followed by a reporter who was interviewing an office worker. Soon after, the reporters informed viewers about more fires that had suddenly broken out across the country. A map popped up on the screen with little symbols of fires displaying where the fires had broken out.
Later, a meteorologist began to provide a scientific and natural explanation for the fires, and a psychiatrist suggested that an arsonist had planned the fires and discussed the possible motivation behind them. The reporters then spoke to members of the FBI, who had concluded that it was in fact one individual who lived in D.C. who had planned the fires.
Next, a group of firemen were displayed frantically putting out an apartment building fire in which an overwhelming amount of smoke was filling the atmosphere and flowing out of the windows of the building.
All the while, the map of the United States had repeatedly been shown on the screen, revealing more and more fires that were spreading across the country.
A reporter then revealed that they had located the arsonist and where he lived. The camera showed the outside of another apartment building where a large police officer was pulling John aggressively by the arm out towards his police car. Another reporter ran up to him and asked, “Why have you done this? Why have you done this horrible deed?”
To this, John replied, “Well it should be obvious! Everyone should understand why I have done this.”
“Obvious? How could it be obvious?” the reporter asked earnestly.
“Well, look at the map, the map that you’ve been using all day,” John answered.
At that moment, the map of the U.S. that the TV station had been using throughout the report was displayed, but now, all the little flames had connected to one another to spell out “GINNY WILL YOU MARRY ME?”
Dr. John Hogan of the Stone Ridge Theology Department still lives here in the D.C. area with his wife, Virginia Hogan, who said yes to his outrageous proposal. They have two daughters Elizabeth ‘18 and Victoria Hogan.
The main lesson to be learned from this experience is that one should never settle. Wait patiently for the right person, and when you’ve found them, do all that you can to make them yours.
“You want to be the most important thing this [person] has ever done, and that should be something that is expressed. When I was [proposing to Ginny], God willing, I was only going to do this once in my life. I waited a long time for the person, and I wanted to do something cool, something really good,” reflects Dr. Hogan.
“When you get married, if you’re not scared to death, you might want to re-think [it], because it is one of the scariest things you will ever do. You are giving your whole self to another person. Ginny could rip me to shreds – emotionally, psychologically, financially – she just could, but she won’t. I trust her. And the reason I wanted to marry her was because I felt that she was the person that I could give my whole self to, and not only would I be okay, but I would be even better with her,” he said.
Thirteen Years
The next story is about a girl named Barbara.
She first saw David on the blacktop of the middle school playground. “The clouds parted and the sun shone a ray on his golden head,” she said, “And I knew, that that was it! I was gone. I was done. And I fell in love with him. Right then. I was fourteen.”
At the time, Barbara did not have many friends. On the contrary, David was “athletic and attractive and shy and sweet.”
“And he knew nothing of me,” she said.
“Middle school boys are often awful,” she said, “But he was not.”
Throughout both middle and high school, Barbara and David got to know each other in their homeroom.
One day, David asked Barbara to go to a dance with him, but she said no for fear of losing him. He soon became her best friend.
Another year passed of their friendship, and one night, as they were hanging out at his house, he asked her to go for a walk.
The air was brisk, the snow was falling, and the full moon was out when David first kissed Barbara. Immediately, Barbara’s fear of losing him was gone, and she finally agreed to date him, filled with chills, thinking to herself, “I think this is what love is supposed to be.”
David and Barbara dated for the remainder of high school and were voted Prom King and Queen their senior year.
After they graduated, however, life began to interfere as he went off to college and she took two years of travel.
Over the years, Barbara had grown so close to David’s mother that his mother would call Barbara every year on Barbara’s birthday to catch up.
As David began his freshman year at Clemson, Barbara was on a plane to South Africa. On the plane, she met a South African man named Ingo Rankin who offered to show her around the country. After a year of dating, Ingo proposed, and Barbara said yes.
Barbara went back home to spend Christmas with her family in Philadelphia while her fiance was in the South African army.
David heard through his mother that Barbara was engaged and drove up from Clemson to re-confess his love to Barbara and break up her engagement. Though he was successful in the breaking off Barbara’s engagement, the two only dated through the summer, after which David went back to school, and they both had to move on with their lives.
Almost seven years passed when Barbara and David met face to face at their ten year high school reunion. Once again, they could not get enough of each other, but life moved on.
At this point, they were both done with college. Barbara began working as a teacher at the Sacred Heart School in New Orleans, and David was working in California.
Years passed, but Barbara and David’s mother were still close, and on Barbara’s birthday one year, Barbara was informed that David was engaged to a woman in California. Trying to play it off, Barbara replied to David’s mother that she, too, was engaged, although it wasn’t true, hoping the news would get back to David.
One day, out of the blue, Barbara received a letter from David, asking about her life. Barbara wrote back, and they briefly reconnected.
Soon after, Barbara received a call from David. His mother was ill and he asked Barbara if he could “swing by” New Orleans on his way home to Ohio from California (quite out of the way) to see her.
At this point, Barbara had heard through David’s mother that his engagement had been called off. She thought to herself, “This was my first love, my first boyfriend, but it is going to be okay. I am a grown woman now, I have a life, and it is going to be alright.” She agreed to see him.
So David came to New Orleans to see Barbara and stayed there with her for about a week. But by the end of the week, Barbara was done with waiting. It had been 13 years since they had first fallen in love, and she had been patient over the years, so she told him, “I’ve always loved you, I still love you, you’re standing right in front of me, and you better do this. And if you’re not going to do this, then goodbye.”
So David decided to move to Louisiana. They dated for another year before David finally proposed.
Barbara and David Beachler are now happily married with a 13-year-old daughter named Kiah.
The lesson that Ms. Beachler learned from her experience was ultimately to take the harder path for the better outcome.
“Every path is convoluted,” she says. “Most paths are going to be hard. Trust in that feeling when you can’t hear anything in your ears, and your heart’s going and your knees are buckling, and you just know it. And it’s not always going to be easy, but you just gotta keep trying.”
Across the Ocean
The last story is about a girl named Victoria from Boston who travelled to Cambridge for graduate school where she studied Medieval Literature.
The first night of classes, Victoria went to a Triculation dinner the school hosted. There, she was randomly seated next to a man named John from Texas who was a Classics major and the two of them really hit it off.
After the dinner, Victoria didn’t hear from John for a month due to his extreme focus on his studies.
A month later, Victoria and her friends had been living life to the fullest, and they threw a potluck dinner at their house that John happened to attend.
Victoria was taken aback by the beautiful Texan man, who not only could speak multiple languages, but was also sitting down playing the mandolin for everyone.
For a medieval literature major, Victoria was allured by the intelligence and cultural interests that they both obviously shared.
It was not long before they began to see each other more often; he became her first boyfriend.
Soon after, there was a celebration called Burns Night, a tradition at Cambridge that includes a black tie dinner and an Irish ceilidh, which together added to an enchanting night at Cambridge.
After the ceilidh, Victoria and John strolled the beautiful campus. It was a lovely night. On a busy street, with the university to their backs, John first kissed Victoria.
“My ears were ringing,” she said. “I couldn’t hear anything. Time stopped.”
John and Victoria dated for the year, until John’s program ended, and he had to return home to Texas.
Unsure of how to handle the situation, they began discussing it, but ended up having a huge fight, fueled by their emotions and lack of time.
Before the two of them could agree on a resolution, John changed his facebook status from “In a relationship” to “It’s complicated” and Victoria was both confused and angered.
However, with a killer pep talk from her best friends, Victoria went out that night to the college bar with a smile on her face, ready to have good time, regardless of the situation.
However, in acting upon the “complexity” of their relationship that John decided upon, John quickly became annoyed; he was much more invested in the relationship than he had seemed the night before.
This lack of communication led to another fight that was settled the next day over coffee. John and Victoria decided that they would just enjoy the few weeks left that they had together before he departed and then they would break up.
When the time came for John to leave and move back to Texas, they were both a mess. Luckily, Victoria’s best friend took her to Dublin to try to distract her during this difficult time.
Though Dublin was amazing, all Victoria could think about was John, and they exchanged emails every day.
The emails quickly escalated to Skype calls that would last up to eight hours a day.
John was heading to law school that fall, but confidently revealed to Victoria that he intended to propose to her before the time he graduated after the next four years.
During that first year, Victoria moved back to Boston, where the two of them continued their long distance relationship between Boston and Dallas for almost a year.
In May of that year, the two of them returned to Cambridge to attend a May Ball, which is thrown at the end of the school year and includes alumni.
All of Victoria and John’s friends were there for the event, making it an extra special trip.
As the two of them were walking towards the school, they passed over a beautiful bridge that they had walked over every day on their way to their classes. They stopped for a moment to admire the beautiful day.
On one side of the bridge was a beautiful old little chapel, while the other side was green grassland that local farmers would use to graze their cattle.
To no surprise, Victoria started off on a tangent about the cows and the whole scene and the metaphors within them with the architecture and the nature and how romantic it all was.
After she finished analyzing the whole scene, she quickly realized that John hadn’t said anything for a while, so she turned to him, looking down to John on one knee.
Startled, Victoria got down on her knees, overwhelmed with emotion, replying yes that she would in fact marry him, and the two of them got to celebrate their engagement with all of their best friends where they had first met.
Unfortunately, after the May Ball, Victoria went back to Boston to begin journalism school, and John returned to Dallas to continue law school, the beginning of their two year-long distance-engagement.
After the two years, Victoria moved down to Dallas, where they were married, and they lived for two years together while she started education school.
However, when it was time to apply to jobs, they hoped to move to Boston, but Victoria got a job as a teacher at the Sacred Heart School there, and John did not, so the next two years of their marriage were again long distance.
Finally, they decided to make what they call the “Mid-Atlantic Compromise” were they both decided to find jobs in DC and live together.
Ms. Capehart and her husband have now been married for six years, but have been together for ten, only half of which they have been able to spend together.
However, through all of the struggles that come with long distance, Ms. Capehart has no regrets from her decision.
“Don’t settle!” she says, “You wait and find a person who makes your ears ring and where you feel that sense of joy around them, that is the person you want to be with. Don’t waste your time! The time you spend with someone who is eh is the time you could be spending with the person who is supposed to be yours, and then you stick with it!”
