Lola and Lolo in the Philippines where my Lolo grew up.
Lolo and Lola in upstate New York where my Lola would go during the summer to see her family.
The year was 1968. Lani, as his friends would call him, although the name given to him at birth was Alejandro Dumas Delano Poblete Manalo, stepped off the Navy ship he had been on. His boat would be stationed there for a couple months and as a welcome into the town, the local YWCA, Young Women Christian Association, welcomed them to a dinner and dance.
Carol was getting home from a work day at an technology factory where she would wind impossibly thin wire through freckle sized metal rings, which would eventually become the huge computers that were just coming out back then. As she got to the lobby of the YWCA building she was living in, she saw a flyer for free dinner and dance to welcome a Navy ship that had just docked into. Free food, she thought, I’m in!
My Lolo always starts this story with “We met on the dance floor, and we have been dancing ever since!” After they met at the dance, really soon after, my Lolo was deployed for six months and Lani and Carol wrote letters through that time. When he came back to California they kept seeing each other and before Lani had to go back out to sea, they decided to get married in the court, one year after they had met. After signing the papers, they both walked separate directions down the street and bought each other rings. Went they came back together, my Lolo felt like he didn’t get my Lola a fancy enough ring. Her wedding ring in a gold band with tiny details etched in with black x’s across it. My Lolo’s wedding band is silver with a diamond in the middle of it. I think they both cost the same amount of money and are cherished by my Lola and Lolo, even now.
Soon after they got married my Lolo went away on the ship again. Soon enough, she found out that she was pregnant. My Lola lived in the Philippines with my Lolo’s family for maybe even up to six months at a time. They lived and raised kids on Guam, Hawai’i, visits in the Philippines, and then settled in Bremerton, Washington where my Lolo retired from the Navy.
This is just a first draft of the story from the details I can remember from listening growing up. I want to record my Lola and Lolo telling the story really soon!
Reading the book Dark Blue Suit by Peter Bacho connected to my family’s story. I am thinking about the intersection between race and sex as my grandparents entered a mixed race relationship. It is interesting that Pinoys came over to work and did not yet have families as well as Navy men come to America and did not a wife or children (I learned from my Lolo that on the application for the Navy, you couldn’t apply if you were already married. Maybe the government didn’t want to pay more and take care of the wife too or it got complicated with national identity?). So, it seems like this led to the result of having interracial marriages.