A military love story remembered in letters

BY NOELLE OLSON EDITOR

Imagine looking through your parent’s attic and finding a stack of love letters your dad wrote to your mom when he was serving in the U.S. Navy.

That’s what Greg and Suzanne’s Tardiff’s daughter Megan discovered, and she decided to put all of the letters into a book called, “Letters from the Saratoga.”

Greg wrote the letters to Suzanne when he was a parachute rigger on the USS Saratoga aircraft carrier.

“The letters are from the nine months he was on the ship,” Suzanne said. “I just liked the fact that there was so much to learn about the war in the letters. The thing that really got me was that he was on this huge aircraft carrier for nine months and yet he found something to write every day.”

One of Suzanne’s favorite excerpts from the book: “That’s all the new news I have. The ship’s schedule is still the same. The war is still the same. Everything is still the same. Sure will be glad when things start being different. I love you, Greg.”

Greg grew up in White Bear Lake and Suzanne lived in Highland Park when they first met in the winter of 1970.

“A friend of mine from work had convinced me to attend a blind date of sorts — it was really a skating/broomball party with lots of people attending, and Greg was to be one of them,” Suzanne said. “At the time, my friend’s husband was driving a school bus for work and I needed a ride. So, I was picked up for our first date on a school bus standing on a snowy corner with a broom in my hand. When Greg walked in, he had his arm around another girl and I said to my friend, ‘What kind of a date is this? He has a girlfriend!’ It was his sister.”

Suzanne said the night turned out “quite well.” The couple had a couple more dates afterward while Greg was still home in Minnesota.

“Greg even took me to his family Christmas dinner at his grandfather’s house, where I met his family,” Suzanne said. “We were able to spend New Year’s Eve together before he left to fly back to NAS (Naval Station) Corpus Christi.”

They continued a long distance relationship by talking on the telephone three times a week for six months while he was on base.

“He was planning to come home in July for a wedding, so he invited me to fly down to the base he was stationed at to spend time together before driving back to Minnesota together,” Suzanne said. “We had a good time there at South Padre Island as well as horseback riding on the King Ranch, where he kept a horse. A week after the wedding, he left home for Texas.”

Greg was then transferred to the Naval Station in Mayport, Florida, and the USS Saratoga.

“He was very lonely there, and during one of our late night chats, he asked me if I would consider moving to Florida,” Suzanne said. “Confused by the question, I replied, ‘What are you asking me?’ Greg responded that he was asking me to marry him. I said yes, and the next three months I rushed to set up a wedding mostly by myself.”

Before Thanksgiving, Greg called her and lamented that he was lonely and would be bored because he had four days off for the holiday.

“I offered to buy him a ticket to fly home,” Suzanne said. “He accepted and Greg met my entire family for the first time. Additionally, we were able to get a marriage license and get him fitted for his tuxedo instead of me having to figure that out by proxy.”

Greg returned home for Christmas and the couple got married on Wednesday, Dec. 29. After the wedding, the couple moved to an apartment in Mayport, Florida.

They were aware that the ship was being deployed to the Mediterranean in July and he would have to go at that time. They were looking forward to spending six months together, but the