My best valentine's day gift ever

        I submitted the following to the Columbus Dispatch as an entry to their Valentine's Day Essay contest.  It was chosen as one of the winning entries and published in the Dispatch on February 14, 1998:
    On February 14, 1975, romance was not exactly in the air on the American army post in Aschaffenburg, Germany.
    Back then there were few women in the military and none of them stationed in Aschaffenburg.  
    I was one of a handful of civilian women employed on the post, but I ran the post wood-working shop and was strictly a jeans-flannel-shirt-tennis shoes kind of a girl.  I was every soldier's pal but nobody's sweetheart.
    That is, until this particular February 14, when a young lieutenant with whom I'd struck up a friendship stopped by my shop with a bouquet of daisies and a small gift-wrapped package.
    "I hope you don't mind they're not roses," he said, offering me the bouquet.  "You just strike me more as the daisies type."  Then he gave me the package.  "I didn't think you'd like perfume or jewelry, but I saw these at the PX and right away thought of you."
    I unwrapped the package to find a pair of regulation black leather army gloves with olive-drab green wool inserts.
    "These will keep your hands really warm when you ride your bike to work", he said.
    Those gloves did in fact keep my hands warm for years, and I don't think any gift since has warmed my heart as much.
    And on the day my lieutenant and I were married, just a little over two years after that memorable Valentine's Day, I held a bouquet of daisies.