PIN CURLS AND ALL
MARY BRICKNER AND ROY GRAYHEK (ON LEFT), SECOND DATE, 1946.
If You Could See Me Now
—TADD DAMERON & CARL SIGMAN, 1946
If Mary Bricker had let vanity rule the day, she might never have met her future husband. In 1946, Mary worked in an office at the Bremerton Shipyard and lived in a nearby dormitory for single ladies. One February evening, her friend Cora knocked on her door. Cora had a date with her boyfriend, but he didn’t have a car. So, the resourceful young man found a fellow Marine, Roy Grayhek, who had one and asked him if he’d be interested in going on double date.
“I said, ‘How am I going to do that? I don’t know anybody,” Roy recalled. His friend told him not to worry, assuring him that Cora would fix him up. But Cora had problems finding an available girl. She’d knocked on several doors before trying Mary’s, and Mary wasn’t interested either. “I’d just shampooed my hair and put it up in pin curls,” Mary said. “But Cora begged me. Finally, I put on a turban and wound it over the pin curls and out we went.”
Roy had recently returned to Bremerton after spending three years in the South Pacific, having joined the Marines in 1940 at age 18. His reason for enlisting was simple. “I was living in Pendleton (Oregon) with no prospects of a decent job and no way to go to college.” Not one to shy away from a challenge, Roy volunteered for the elite Marine Raiders in October of 1942. He served in the 4th Raider Battalion under the command of Lt. Col. James Roosevelt (President Franklin Roosevelt’s oldest son) throughout the Pacific theater. The Raider battalions, organized in January 1942 and disbanded two years later, were developed as a Marine Corps special mission force.
ROY GRAYHEK
In 1943, Roy set off for Guadalcanal aboard the USS Polk. From the ship, he and his fellow Marines would scramble down landing nets into waiting boats. They went from island to island throughout the Solomons, engaging the Japanese in fierce jungle combat. One particular skirmish stands out—the battle of Bairoko Harbor on the island of New Georgia, July 20, 1943. “I guess you might say we were outmanned,” Roy recalled. “They started lobbing mortars at us the minute we hit the beach.”
Leaning forward in his chair, he paused and frowned. “I’ve never talked about this before.” Taking a deep breath, he continued. “I leaned my head against a tree for a moment and a bullet ricocheted off it.” He rubbed his thumb down the side of his face. “A splinter hit my cheek.” The next day as he sat on a tree stump, he glanced down at his feet. “I saw a bullet had torn through the sole of my boot.” Roy reflected on the fate of his fellow Marines. “My machine gun squad had two killed and one badly wounded.” He shook his head. “It just wasn’t my time to go, that’s all.”
That’s not to say he escaped unscathed. In addition to his shrapnel wound, months of jungle fighting resulted in a prolonged struggle with malaria and hookworm. Roy spent three months hospitalized in New Zealand before he was sent back to his ship. By the time they docked in Bremerton, Roy was ready to put the war behind him and get on with life. A blind date seemed far removed from the horror of the jungle and that suited him just fine.
The foursome went dancing. Mary said, “I thought he looked so strong and nice in his uniform.”
She assumed Roy had enjoyed her company, but when he didn’t call, she wondered. “I didn’t call her for a few days and my buddy told me Cora said Mary were upset that I didn’t call her—so I did.” Turned out he just needed some prompting. Mary laughed. She already had a boyfriend and wasn’t really worried, but said, “I thought maybe I didn’t look so great in the turban and I wanted another chance to show him how I fixed myself up!”
Evidently, that second chance left a lasting impression because a few weeks later Roy proposed. The details, however, are vague. “I think I just said, ‘Well, heck, why don’t we get married?’ I guess I loved her. She was beautiful!” Roy said. Then he grinned. “I’m not known for romance.” Romantic or not, Mary’s erstwhile beau was history, and she accepted Roy’s proposal. “I just wanted to be with him,” she said. On May 25, 1946, six weeks after that first date, they were married in the Naval Chapel.
When Roy was discharged in November, the couple moved to be near Roy’s parents. He took a job as a lineman for Pacific Northwest Bell and stayed with the company for 40 years. In 1950 their son Stephen was born, followed by a daughter, Diane, in 1951. Two years later, Roy began building a home for his family. “We lived in the basement for three years while Roy worked on the house,” said Mary. “He did everything himself, except for the plumbing and brick work.”
GRAYHEK WEDDING, MAY 25, 1946.
GRAYHEK HONEYMOON, JUNE 1946.
Roy shrugged. “My dad was a very good carpenter. He’d come over on the weekends and help and then lay out my work for the next week.” And while Roy built the house, his family continued to grow. A son, Larry, was born in 1955, followed by another son, Paul, in 1956. Mary said, “The boys were born while we were still living in the basement—I was anxious to get out!” The house was finished in time for the arrival of Theresa in 1959, Marie in 1962 and twin girls in 1964. Sadly, one of the twins lived only eight days, but the family drew comfort from the presence of the surviving baby, Jan. The babies were the first set of twins born at Holy Family Hospital, and when Jan started school, Mary returned to the hospital—this time as a nurse’s aide in the pediatrics unit.
The couple raised their bustling brood in a neighborhood filled with similar families. Neighborhood sledding parties and picnics were common, and the families often swapped babysitting duties if a couple wanted to go out. Mary sighed. “In those days you didn’t fear when your kids were out of your sight.”
In 1986, Roy retired from the phone company and two years later Mary retired from Holy Family. They embraced retirement with the same enthusiasm they had parenting, and embarked on a series of cross-country car trips. “She’s the navigator, I’m the pilot,” said Ray. But they didn’t limit their travels to the U.S. They took several cruises and traveled to Germany and Japan. For Roy, the trip to Japan was a return visit. “Our outfit was the first to land in Japan and 49 years later I ended up in the same place.” He shook his head. “I didn’t recognize a darn thing!”
They also enjoy gardening. Roy said, “She does the flowers, I do the veggies.”
His Purple Heart and three Bronze Stars are tucked away somewhere, but photos of his children and grandchildren are prominently displayed.
As they celebrate more than six decades of marriage, Mary feels like a blessed woman. “He’s just a wonderful man. He knows my quirks and puts up with them.” Roy added, “Yeah, but I don’t talk about them!” They laughed together and reflected on the date that almost wasn’t. If someone else had been willing to go—if Mary had been too vain to go out with her hair in pin curls … if …
It’s something that Roy doesn’t dwell on. Instead he revels in his good fortune. He said, “I was just a dumb 23-year-old—not too bright. I say the good Lord picked her out for me.”
“Be considerate and respectful of each other, but don’t forget to have some joy and laugh a little.”—Mary Grayhek
MARY AND ROY GRAYHEK, 2011.
Roy Grayhek died February 11, 2014