As their dates continued, Otto’s and Betty Jean’s feelings for each other deepened.
“We’d been roller-skating several times together, and a friend of mine then had a little Model A with a rumble seat in it,” says Otto. “Well, Betty and I were in the back in the rumble seat, and I reached over and kissed her. I really felt that that was what was supposed to be done. And that’s what I did,” he chuckles.
“I’ll never forget the emotions I felt when he kissed me. He held me close and kissed me so gently,” says Betty Jean. “And that just stayed with me for years. I never forgot it.”
But the love that was blossoming between them was suddenly interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. And like so many other young men, Otto followed the call to battle.
“The last time I saw him, he came down to our place,” Betty Jean remembers. “To see him go, it felt like I’d never see him again.
“It was hard. It was hard to see him go.”
“I went into the navy in July of 1941. And they shipped us out of San Diego after we finished training, to Pearl Harbor,” says Otto.
It was there that Otto would come face-to-face with the horror of war. On December 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese bombers attacked the island in two waves of destruction.
By the time the surprise attack ended two hours later, 21 ships were destroyed and over 2,400 people lay dead. Otto’s division of 122 sailors did not escape unscathed.
“There were only seventy-some of us left. So I lost a lot of good friends at that time. It was quite a blow,” says Otto.
The only thing that helped ease the pain was Betty Jean’s letters.
“And though he wasn’t much of a writer, I would write constantly because I felt it was important to keep his morale up,” says Betty Jean. “I would write about incidents that happened, the funny things that happened, and I would send jokes and letters and things.”
The letters kept their love alive during the lonely months at sea. And then, just before Betty Jean graduated from high school, a special package arrived.
Betty Jean recalls, laughing, “I was practically tearing it apart on my way to the house. I got to the house and opened it up, and there was a little jewelry box, and inside the box there was a string of pearls. My first reaction was that he must have thought a lot of me to get me a string of pearls,” says Betty Jean. “It meant a lot to me to think that he cared that much, and I think that it was his way of trying to tell me something that he … that he just couldn’t express in words.”
Betty Jean was right. Otto was in love and he was ready to ask for her hand in marriage. He eventually wired her to meet him in California when he returned to the States on leave, so that they could finalize their plans.
“But then her dad said no. He said, ‘I don’t think you should do that,’” says Otto. “I was really upset at the time about it.”
“I was very, very disappointed that I didn’t get to see him then,” says Betty Jean. “After that was when things began to slow down a little bit. I didn’t hear quite so often from him after he went back to sea.”
As the war intensified, and Otto’s letters stopped arriving, Betty Jean feared the worst.
“I had thought that he had been killed, because I hadn’t heard anything from him after that. So,” she says, emotionally, “I felt like he was gone. I felt that way for years.”
As the war in the Pacific stretched from months into years, Otto made the difficult decision to stop writing his girlfriend so that she could get on with her life. And when the letters stopped coming, Betty Jean had no choice but to face the facts.
“When I came to the realization that I would probably never see Otto again, I realized that life would have to go on, though I hadn’t heard from him. And I began to date others,” she says. “Then I met my husband, Clarence, and we married and had five children.”
As the years passed, Betty Jean would often wonder what had happened to Otto.
“He was always there in the back of my mind, like a piece of my heart that had been tucked away and hidden for a while,” she reflects.
Life continued for Betty Jean, and in June of 1995, she and Clarence celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary.
“The years just literally flew by, and then came the time when I lost my husband. He’d been ill for some time. And then, my thoughts went to Otto. I could not get him out of my mind, wondering if he were alive. Just wishing I could hear something,” Betty Jean says.
And then, as if someone heard her prayer, Betty Jean received a letter from one of Otto’s cousins, Lila, with an old photograph inside.
“It had my three sisters and me in it, and it was taken in 1938,” she describes. “A grade school picture.”
“I was so excited and so exhilarated when I got that, that I just had to get in touch with Lila and thank her for it,” recalls Betty Jean. “And I said, ‘Incidentally, have you ever heard from your cousin Otto?’”
And in reply, Cousin Lila sent her Otto’s phone number.
Betty Jean called him up, saying, “Otto Sloan? This is a gal that you probably won’t remember.”
“And I couldn’t believe it, but I recognized her voice,” declares Otto. “It’s Betty Jean,” he said.
“How did you know who it was?” she laughed.
“I’d recognize that voice anyplace,” Otto replied.
The call could not have come at a more perfect time, for Otto had also lost his wife of nearly fifty years. And he too had never forgotten his first love. Soon they were writing and talking on a daily basis, and fifty-eight years of separation quickly vanished.
“You just don’t realize how many times I’ve wondered where you were and what you were doing. And if you were all right,” Betty Jean told Otto. “You’re probably looking just as young as you ever did.
“And then the talks got a little more personal,” Betty Jean reveals. “We told each other our strengths and weaknesses.
“We just talked about everything there was to talk about. It was just like we were face-to-face,” she laughs. “And then it became apparent that we were discussing marriage possibilities.”
“It was unbelievable that we could feel so much love for each other just by talking on the phone like we had,” says Otto.
“We had made definite plans just over the phone, practically. We’re getting married. If anybody had been there to pronounce us man and wife, we would’ve accepted that,” laughs Betty Jean.
In the summer of 1999, after not seeing each other for fifty-eight years, Otto and Betty Jean were reunited.
“My heart was pounding so hard that I could hardly keep it in its place,” says Betty Jean, laughing. “He just took my hand and hung on to it for dear life. And I whispered to him, ‘Don’t ever let go of me again. Don’t ever let go of me again.’ And he said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’”
Otto kept his promise four weeks later when he pledged to take Betty Jean as his lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, so long as they both should live.
“Betty Jean is still the little girl that I used to love, and still love,” says Otto.
“He’s the same as he was when he was a boy,” says Betty Jean. “And I’ve even told him that. I said, ‘You look just like you were.’ When he puts his head down and looks up at me like that, I just see