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Kaelyn “KK” Krawczyk woke up feeling well-rested and safe. JJ, her terrier mix, greeted KK with a sniff and a lick as she felt her owner begin to stir — one of several checks the service dog would make throughout the day.

After five years of being paired with service dog JJ, 10-year-old KK finally knew what it felt like to sleep soundly and go about a normal day, unafraid of a sudden reaction from her disease, mastocytosis.

She knew that JJ would be there — a spunky, brown-eyed alarm protecting her from her silent disease.

After a few moments of cuddling, they both begin their days. On the agenda is a busy day at elementary school and piano lessons.

But for JJ, it’s not just about hanging out and having fun with her owner. Every day, she has a job: to keep an eye on KK and make sure she knows when she’s about to have an episode.

Without her canine friend, KK would often be caught by a sudden reaction, ranging from hives to anaphylaxis.

According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, mastocytosis causes an abnormal accumulation of mast cells, a type of white blood cells. This causes KK to have a sort of allergic reaction to things like temperature fluctuations, stress or chemicals.

Through her keen sense of smell, JJ can determine if KK is in need of medication to limit her body’s response to a stimulus, stopping the reaction before it starts.

The human body emits certain scents depending on its chemical makeup, which JJ was trained to detect. When KK’s body emits an odor associated with a reaction, JJ alerts her.

“She barks and then she jumps up and tugs at my clothing,” KK said.

This gives KK enough time to take medication before she notices symptoms from the reaction.

Many like KK owe their increased independence to a nonprofit organization that trains service dogs.

Eyes Ears Nose and Paws, located in Carrboro, helps train service dogs to meet the individual needs of each client, including those suffering from mobility impairments and diabetes.

Training in town

When Deb Cunningham decided she wanted to train service dogs, her friend Maria Ikenberry fully supported her.

However, there was small obstacle to her plan. While there were service dog training organizations in eastern and western North Carolina, none existed in the central part of the state.

“When it became apparent that there wasn’t an organization in the area, I encouraged Deb to start a nonprofit and very quickly realized that I needed to put my money where my mouth is,” Ikenberry said.

Ikenberry volunteered as the administrative head, and in 2008, the two women founded Eyes Ears Nose and Paws.

By 2010, they were placing their first dogs.

Finding the right match

Trevor Bell, a Ph.D student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be getting a service dog from Eyes Ears Nose and Paws in March.

Diagnosed 15 years ago with diabetes, Bell decided to get a service dog after moving to North Carolina from Lubbock, Texas, to study health communications at UNC’s School of Media and Journalism.

Bell’s disease often poses an obstacle for daily life. A sudden drop in his blood sugar will leave him with a migraine and feeling lethargic for the rest of the day.

These episodes are especially prevalent while sleeping. Bell often wakes up to low blood sugar and has to take a glucose tablet to bring his body back to equilibrium.

“Luckily I’m young and take pretty good care of myself and my blood sugar, but there are times when people just don’t wake up when their blood sugar drops,” Bell said.

A service dog can provide Bell with a warning before his blood sugar drops, allowing him to treat the episode before he even experiences the symptoms — similar to KK and JJ.

With Eyes Ears Nose and Paws just five minutes down the road from his new home in Chapel Hill, Bell decided to apply for a service dog.

After an initial interview with Cunningham and Michelle Krawczyk, KK’s mother and a board member at the organization, Bell was put on the waitlist.

“It’s not just a fit for me; it’s a fit for the dog,” he said.

Bell met the five dogs in training in a round of ‘speed dating,’ which included walks, playing and lots of petting.

After seeing him interact with the dogs, Cunningham decided that he was a good fit for at least one. Bell would be meeting his new sidekick three short months later.

The cost of growth

Since 2010, Eyes Ears Nose and Paws has placed 14 dogs, and it’s expecting to place five to six more this year.

“In seven years, we hope to be at a place where we’re placing 12 to 15 dogs a year,” Ikenberry said.

But all of this training comes with a price tag. While they receive money from donations and grants, the majority of their funding comes from the clients.

The cost of one service dog is a hefty $20,000 for up to two years of training. The organization helps as much as it can by providing scholarships based on the client’s personal income.

“I’m a Ph.D student so I don’t have a lot of income right now,” Bell said, “So, I was fortunate enough to be granted a $15,000 scholarship. Which really helps out — that’s 75 percent.”

The rest of the cost is either paid for by the client or obtained through fundraising. Michelle Krawczyk raised the entire amount for her daughter’s service dog through a series of fundraisers.

These funds are funneled directly into the program, helping Eyes Ears Nose and Paws continue to grow and train more dogs — the organization now has 17 dogs in training.

As it grows, Eyes Ears Nose and Paws, is not only able to help more people, but is also able to shorten the amount of time clients wait for their service dogs.

The early stages of training

The graduation rate from Eyes Ears Nose and Paws is about 50 percent.

“We want our dogs to be the best of the best,” Ikenberry said, “This work could stress them out, and we don’t want to put a dog in a stressful occupation. We want to ensure their happiness and the client’s happiness.”

Training begins when the dogs are just eight weeks old with a community volunteer.

They learn puppy manners such as house training, learning to sit on command and socializing with people and other animals. After about five months, the dogs are taken to a prison.

Eyes Ears Nose and Paws began partnering with Franklin Correctional Center in Bunn in 2014, pairing inmates with potential service dogs to complete their training.

Service dog training requires up to 18 months of commitment and is essentially a full-time job. Because of this, Eyes Ears Nose and Paws is always in need of more trainers.

After reaching out to the prison, Eyes Ears Nose and Paws was able to set up a group of 18 trainers that committed 18 months of their prison stay to training the service dogs.

The inmates were able to provide constant care for the dogs as well as daily, in-depth training.

At first, the dogs are trained for both assistance and scent work. As large breed dogs, they easily fall into the role of either a mobility assistance service dog or a medical alert service dog.

Those who need a medical alert dog often also need help with things like retrieving medicine or picking up things from the floor. Training the dogs for both jobs allows them to better meet their owners’ every need.

Once they learn the basics, the dogs begin specialized training depending on the assigned owner. JJ was taught to distinguish the scent KK’s body emanates when she has a reaction.

Ikenberry likens it to a human learning to stop at a stop sign. By learning a patterned response to the sign, we know to react when we see it, even if we only notice it in our peripheral vision. We’re taught that this sign supersedes everything else in that moment.

After 18 months, the dogs attend a leash ceremony and graduate from their initial training. Then they meet their new owners and spend two weeks in intense training sessions lasting eight hours each day, preparing both dog and owner for their new lives.

Eyes Ears Nose and Paws has already placed 14 service dogs, helping owners increase their independence and gain peace of mind.

“JJ is just so amazing,” Michelle Krawczyk said. “She is really just life-changing for us. It’s better than any medial equipment or medication that has been provided before.”

But it’s not just the lives of the clients that Eyes Ears Nose and Paws is improving.

“Our mission is to train and place service dogs, but I think what we’ve found is that the impact on the inmate trainers is just as profound as the impact on the clients,” Ikenberry said.

“We’re not just impacting lives in the final stage of placement, but all throughout the training. That’s a powerful thing to be a part of.”

Edited by Sara Salinas. 

By John-Paul Gemborys

Laurence Isaacs, a tall, vociferous redhead not quite on the cusp of 45, strolled across the baseline of the tennis court, spinning his racket in one hand.

“Nice serve,” Laurence yelled to his opponent on the opposite side of the net. “I didn’t hear as much shit talk earlier.”

“That’s because you weren’t here,” Eddie Blount called back.

Eddie, an older gentleman who was quick on his feet despite the considerable girth age had bestowed upon him, was on serve, and rather than trade verbal barbs with Laurence, Eddie preferred to let his game do the talking.

And his serve was a big talker.

In one fluid motion, Eddie drew his racket behind his head, tossed the ball into the air and then blasted it into the opposite service box, sending Laurence scurrying to the baseline, barely managing a return and pushing the ball back with an arcing lob. Despite its lack of pace, Laurence’s lob wasn’t actually that bad of a shot, and it forced Eddie to send back a lob of his own — only his had slightly less English. Taking the initiative, Laurence poached Eddie’s lob out of the air, swatting it down like a fly and sending it careening into the fence without even a second bounce.

“I just aim at the big red thing,” Laurence gibed, pointing his racket at Dominic Wainwright, the opposing net player who wore a bright red T-shirt.

On that warm Saturday morning on the hard courts of C.E. Jordan High School, Laurence, Dom and Eddie enjoyed a game of doubles that was both casual and competitive. All three of the men had been playing tennis for most of their lives, and now all of them found themselves playing on the same team within the Eno River league in the 40 and over category at the 4.0 skill level (7.0 is a player of U.S. open caliber, 1.0 is someone picking up a racket for the first time) — subdivisions within subdivisions of the national USTA League, the largest recreational tennis league in the country.

For many, tennis is an escape. For some, it’s a passion. And for some, still, it can be an obsession.

Having played the sport for most of my life, compelled by my tennis coach dad, I abhorred the game for many years. For me it wasn’t so much a game as it was a job — a toil on sunbaked courts where you could see heat mirages flicker and dance in the summer. But being so close to something often gives one a warped view. And as I grew to enjoy playing on my high school tennis team, my relationship with the sport grew increasingly complex, blending hate with love — aloofness with respect. To this day I don’t know how I feel about the sport.

So I’ve always been curious about the men who do love it. What draws these recreational (or not so recreational) hitters to the sport in the first place? What continues to make them play? And what is it about the sport that made them fall in love in the first place?

The casual third space

Edward W. Soja, the soi-disant “urbanist” and distinguished professor emeritus at UCLA, theorized that in life there are two social spaces people typically occupy: the home and the workplace. Soja posited a theory that there is a third space, one that blends the disparate social natures of home and work, which people seek out in order to express their own individuality and uniqueness. For Dom and Eddie, that space is on the tennis court.

“You make good friends,” Eddie said, resting on aluminum bleachers under the shade of a young oak tree. “It’s fun hanging out together, and then if you qualify for states you go on a four-day weekend — everybody gets out of town and has fun, so it’s the camaraderie. And then, you know, the competition’s fun too.” When I asked him, he said there was nothing he hated about the sport. For Dom, his doubles partner, it was a similar story.

“It’s my main social activity,” Dom told me, “so that’s what I like about it. You rarely run into people who aren’t nice.”

Dom is co-captain of the spring team the three men play on, Eno BCK (short for Bullet City Killers). The team, they tell me, won back-to-back state titles in 2011 and 2012 as well as in 2015 in the 40 and over, 4.0-level division before heading to sectionals, which sees the cream of the southeast United States come together and compete for a spot at nationals. Though the game is casual, the men were quick to tell me that it can still be competitive.

“It’s pretty fierce at states,” Dom said. “We’re picking guys from Raleigh and Cary with the intent to go to states and see how far we can go because you go to states, you need such a solid team.”

For Dom and Eddie, they said they both enjoyed the camaraderie and exercise the sport provides. While competition is still a key ingredient, Eddie said the need to win tends to fizzle with age.

“I think, too, the older the league — I think the hardcore ones who are going to be calling lines close are the 18s. You know, they’re still thinking that it’s important in life. The rest of us, you know, we’re just out there to have fun. By the time you’re in the 40s or 55 plus, you’re patting each other on the back and, you know, chatting it up between changeovers, having a good time.”

Competition is everything

For Laurence, tennis wasn’t always recreational, and competition, he said, is always what made the sport fun.

“I am excessively competitive,” he told me. “I have to be competing.”

Laurence is the former men’s high school tennis coach at Durham School of the Arts — he was also my high school tennis coach while I attended DSA from the ninth grade to the twelfth. During those four years, Laurence delivered many impassioned post-game speeches from the front of the team bus, some of unbridled praise for our exceptional play, others of vexation and disappointment.

“When I was coaching you all,” Laurence told me over a glass of sangria after we had retired to Town Hall Burger and Beer, “I would allow not winning to bug me more.”

Laurence eventually left the coaching position so he could spend more time with his growing daughter Ellie.

“I honestly think having a kid has really mellowed me out in a lot of ways,” he chuckled, “but I still maintain that good tennis should be played with just a hint of anger.”

As I polished my California burger off with a swig of ale, the four of us began to wax poetic about past glories and triumphs on the court. Laurence recounted how he went undefeated for two straight seasons.

“So I won 52 consecutive matches across two seasons plus states, plus sectionals,” he told me. “I was fortunate because I had great doubles partners.”

Eventually I asked Laurence what the best part of the sport is.

“Winning,” he replied matter-of-factly.

Making career moves on the court

Not every player I spoke to played the sport strictly for recreation or for a onetime job. For Leo Evans, the sport has been a career. Beginning during the tennis boom of the ’70s and after only playing for a few years in junior college, Leo took his first job as a teaching pro at a resort in the panhandle of Florida.

“I was a little bit of a poser,” he laughed, recalling his lack of experience at the time.

“I really thought I was being hired to be a court maintenance person and maybe work in the shop, but I got there the first day, and he stuck me right on the court teaching.

“My first lesson was with a married couple — newlyweds, you know? A young couple. They had never played tennis before, so it was a match made in heaven.”

Since then, the 61-year-old Leo has worked as a jack-of-all-trades at various pro shops and country clubs. Right now, though, he plays the game nonprofessionally — just for himself.

“I tried a season as the coach of the (C.E.) Jordan High School girls’ team, and that wasn’t very fulfilling,” he told me. “You know the thing is, when you start teaching tennis, quite often that requires you to be teaching when all the players are around to play, you know? And I wasn’t making enough to take up my valuable playing time,” he joked.

As for why he plays, Leo told me that the social aspect is important, but it’s the competition that keeps him coming back.

“I make most of my friends through tennis,” he said, “but, no, still, the absolute joy of playing is the number one thrill to me. If I never met anyone — if I just showed up someplace and just played tennis and never saw ’em, I’d still play. And I’d probably still play as much as I do. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I started a little late, but I still have the same interest and joy of playing that I had when I picked up a racket 37, 38, whatever it was years ago.”

Regardless of the relationship that each player had to tennis, I discovered that beneath the thin veneer of experience, all of the men shared essentially the same reasons for playing. For each one, they all needed a competitive outlet. If it wasn’t tennis, some told me, it would probably be basketball — only basketball can be a killer of joints, and as Leo told me, tennis “is something I can compete at until I get ancient — like I am now.” All of them also claimed to have made their closest friends on the courts.

And after playing a long match, they all agreed that nothing soothes the aches like a cold beer.

Edited by Alison Krug

By Kenzie Cook

Pencils, papers and calculators clutter the desks of students poring over their new math worksheets handed out by their teacher while some take quizzes on the computers in front of them. This is a school I left behind almost two years ago and a class that did not exist in my time. Back in my day, students either understood the material or they did not; nobody received second chances or special attention if they were having trouble. Due to this lack of decent education, U.S. News & World Report has reported that only 13.6 percent of those that graduate from my old school, Southern Alamance High School, are ready for college. I witnessed this statistic firsthand when I graduated. Of my graduating class of roughly 350 students, only about 70 of us went to college right out of high school and many of those that did had already dropped out by sophomore year. While Southern Alamance certainly doesn’t have the lowest percentage of graduates going to college in its school district, it was still the perfect site for the pilot program started by Alamance Community College to help prepare underachieving seniors for graduation and college due.

In a study conducted in 2013, the Community College Research Center at Columbia University found that students who had to take remedial classes in college were less likely to graduate than those that came into college fully prepared. Of the students that went straight from high school to community college that year, 52 percent had to take one or more remedial course in either English or math. To improve this situation and cut down on the number of students in remedial courses, the 2015 session of the North Carolina General Assembly proposed and adopted Senate Bill 561 that was set to take effect in the 2016-2017 school year. This bill required the State Board of Community Colleges to develop a program to introduce high school seniors to remedial courses prior to graduation so they can be better prepared for college.

Students in Alamance County are especially under-performing with a college readiness average of 16.2 percent across all six high schools. For this reason, Alamance Community College has decided to start a course titled “Community College Prep” for high schools in the area to help improve students’ understanding of math and English concepts needed to perform well in college and beyond. Melissa Cook, a college math professor and former middle school math teacher, is one of the main developers of the course and the only math professor from Alamance Community College working on this concept. It is the hope of all involved that the Community College Prep course at Southern Alamance will better prepare high school students for college and that it will be the first of many similar courses at all six high schools in the Alamance-Burlington School System and in school systems across the state of North Carolina.

Past

Jodi Hofberg, curriculum facilitator for the Alamance-Burlington School System, contacted Cook during the fall semester of 2016 about starting a new program to enrich the education of students in ABSS with the help of those at Alamance Community College. Prior to this inquiry, a meeting of all principals in ABSS had taken place in which Teresa Faucette, principal of Southern Alamance High School, said that her school had room in its schedule for an extra class. Added to the fact that Southern Alamance had more students enrolled than any other high schools in the area, this settled the question of which school would be best for piloting the new program. ACC’s Vice President of Instruction, Catherine Johnson, and Hofberg chose to put Cook in charge of setting up an online class for selected students and creating a curriculum that included collective information from ACC’s remedial math and English classes. She was also put in charge of creating and grading placement tests to determine what math and English knowledge the students already possessed so they could build on that.

When asked why the school system picked her to lead this program between ACC and ABSS, Cook said: “I’ve been in developmental math for 10 years at the community college, and I also have a background in English. So when the system office was looking for participants to work on the committee for this project, the Vice President of Instruction basically chose me to be a part of it.”

Along with helping students improve their math and English skills, the course also helps encourage them to apply and enroll at ACC after they graduate high school. They receive credit for the modules they manage to complete while in the course once enrolled at ACC; so they are able to pick up where they left off and continue their education.

Present

The new class began in the 2017 spring semester during all four class periods, averaging around seven students per class. Those who passed the placement test for English work on math and those who passed the placement test for math work on English. Likewise, those who passed neither work on both, and those who passed both do not have to attend the class. A computer teacher is constantly in the classroom, but the students complete all learning through modules put together by Cook. The instructors essentially leave the students to their own devices, watching videos and reading examples to help them learn.

Makayla Starling, a senior taking the course who tested out of the English modules, said she enjoys the class more than the regular math classes held at Southern. “I think it’s really helpful,” said Starling. “You can do the work at your own pace and correct yourself as you go. There’s a lot of writing, and you learn a lot of stuff that you didn’t learn here [at Southern].”

Starling hopes to go into the field of biotechnology and believes this new course is helping her achieve her goals. She plans to go to ACC for two years before transferring to a four-year college where she will complete the degree of her choice.

Daniel Simpson, a senior taking the course who also tested out of the English modules and recently completed the modules assigned to him for math, agrees that the course is helpful. He said that the math modules are helping him remember important math concepts that he had not entirely grasped before. “It really reaches back into what I’ve learned the last four years of doing math in high school,” said Simpson.

Simpson hopes to go into the field of education and is pleased that he already has a path into ACC so that he can eventually transfer to a four-year college to complete his degree.

For students like Starling and Simpson, this course at the high school helps save them a large amount of money. At ACC, it costs a little over $200 for each developmental math and English class, which those who are unable to pass the placement test are required to take. However, with this new program, ACC keeps records of the students’ progress in the modules so they can enroll directly into the courses they need without having the take another placement test. If a student, such as Simpson, manages to complete the entire module, he or she can immediately enroll in higher-level classes.

All students enrolled in this course are required to complete all math and English modules – or test out of them – in order to receive credit at Southern for the class. Cook and Faucette are trying to adjust the requirements so that students that are planning to go into certain degree pathways that do not require all levels of the courses to be completed can be excused. For example, one student in the first-period class wants to go into the Fire Protection Program, which only requires math modules up to MAT030, rather than the MAT080 the students are required to complete. If Cook and Faucette can alter the program in this way, the students will not have to complete the unnecessary extra work.

For now, though, all math and English modules must be completed and passed with at least a grade of 85 in order to progress.

Future

Although Southern Alamance is the only high school in the program currently, Hofberg hopes to add Walter M. Williams High School, Graham High School and Hugh M. Cummings High School to the program this coming school year. They will hopefully be able to add Western Alamance and Eastern Alamance high schools in later years; but for now, Hofberg and Cook are focusing on the success of the program at Southern.

“The goal was to have at least 20 students complete the program. So as long as that happens, it will be considered a success,” Hofberg said when asked what her goals for Southern’s program would be.

As of right now, there are roughly 25 students enrolled in the Community College Prep course at Southern, and about half of those students have completed the modules with half of the semester remaining, so Hofberg’s goal has nearly been reached. Unfortunately, this leaves Cook and Faucette to figure out what to do with these students while their classmates finish their modules. Neither has an idea of how to occupy these students; so for now, they are leaving them in the classes with nothing to do. Cook says that they hope to solve all of the little inconveniences before the program spreads to the rest of the high schools in ABSS.

Alamance Community College’s collaboration with the Alamance-Burlington School System is just one example of community colleges across the state of North Carolina teaming up with high schools in their nearby area to meet the conditions of Senate Bill 561. Several other community colleges are also starting their own programs, though they are flying under the radar for now. Professors like Cook are working overtime to make sure these high school students receive the education they need in order to be prepared for college.

Edited by Samantha Miner

By Alexandra Blazevich

Hallie French lies in bed at her Carrboro, N.C. apartment, her back to the pillows set up to feel as if her husband sleeps next to her. It’s six months after her marriage to Taylor Peele, and he’s deployed in Iraq.

Her cat, Max, lies at her side and purrs along with the humming of the computer as she types her honors thesis. Max lives with her most of the time and goes with her to visit her husband on the weekends he’s not deployed.

From down the hall, her roommate, Nicole Vandiford, sends her a political meme from Facebook. Simultaneously, laughter erupts from their bedrooms.

Before she falls asleep, French gets a call from her husband. The connection is rough. It’s their first phone call in weeks, and the conversation gets emotional.

When he is not deployed, Peele lives in his own apartment in Fayetteville, N.C., about ten minutes from Fort Bragg, where he works as an intelligence analyst for the United States Army. The couple has never lived together.

“She’s very independent,” French’s friend and former Navy Corpsman, Jeremy Zollars said. “She gets a lot done, and makes very good grades. She has an old-person mindset. She is very mature – she’s not the typical 23-year-old going out and getting smashed every night.”

Wife of a different life

After a simple Google search on military wives, a long list of articles like “How Military Marriage Screws Up Your Career” and “How Long Will Your Military Marriage Last?” show up. There’s a popular belief that military couples typically revolve their lives around their husband’s career. The wives cook, clean and take care of the kids, while their husband serves the country to pay the bills. Zollars said about 80 percent of his friends in the Navy were married to women with this traditional lifestyle.

French, however, falls in the latter 20 percent. For starters, she kept her own name after marriage.

“Changing my name wasn’t going to magically make me love him more,” she said. “We’ve always talked about being individual, well-paired partners – not the same person.”

While she feels that changing her name and lifestyle for her husband’s job isn’t necessary, she still supports all that he does.

“She has been nothing but supportive of my decisions throughout my military career, and that is something you can see take a serious toll on people,” Peele said.

French’s roommate has lived with her longer than her husband ever has. Because many military wives live either with their spouse on base or at home with their kids, French’s situation is unusual. She said many people are surprised to hear she has both a husband and a roommate.

French said traditional gender roles are popular in the military, but she thinks they’re old fashioned. She strives to be an individual – something that keeps her strong and independent of her husband and marriage.

“The majority of military wives stand out as very entitled, complacent, and complaining – they don’t do a whole lot, as far as work goes,” Zollars said.

French is definitely not like that – and her husband respects her for it.

“She goes to school and doesn’t complain about my work life,” he said. “She understands that I had this job before I had her and that it is very important to me, just as I understand how important her school is for her.”

French fills her time with a full load of classes at UNC-Chapel Hill, a work study at the Center for the Study of the American South and writing her 40-page honors thesis – a completely different lifestyle than the stereotypical military wife. So in comparison to other Army wives, she said she often doesn’t fit in.

When introducing herself to other military couples at a marriage retreat, French said the other women referred to themselves as wives first, then mothers and lastly their individual selves.

“All of the wives were stay-at-home-moms or sold Avon or something,” French said. “I was the only person there that even remotely fit into my category.”

When it was their turn for introductions, she asked her husband to introduce her simply as, “Hallie, my wife.”

Staying unpressured

Feeling like an outsider isn’t easy, but there is one thing Hallie has in common with many other military wives – her age.

According to the United States Department of Defense’s 2014 Demographics Profile of the Military Community, 23.5 percent of military spouses are 26 to 30 years old, proof that about one-fourth of military couples get married relatively young. A lot of military couples are even younger than this bracket, including French and Peele, but, they do not fit this stereotype entirely.

There’s a popular stigma that young military couples rush to get engaged within a few months of meeting. There’s an expectation to revolve every aspect of their lives around the military.

In basic training, the first two to four months of military training, recruits cannot reach the outside world, with the exception of letters. After graduation, they have access to phones, the internet, and resources off-base. Basic training is typically the hardest part for couples due to the lack of communication, and the pressure to get married young is felt throughout the whole military environment.

“You see a lot of people who get married young in the military for all the wrong reasons,” Peele said.

One of these reasons is for the money. A married person in the Army gets a $60,000 bonus when they finish A-school, compared to $12,000 for a single person.

Zollars said he almost married a friend from home so he could use the extra money to pay her bills. It is a very real option for those in the military, and the pressure is certainly there.

French said she did not personally feel a pressure to get married from the Army, but since the marriage, she’s been pressured by family to have kids. She said her father-in-law asked what her 5-year plan was for having kids – to which she told him to leave and ask again when he’d accept a 10-year plan.

French and Peele got engaged after a year and a half of dating. They were married on their second anniversary – the day after Christmas – a fact that would make any hopeless romantic tear up.

When her family heard news of their wedding after a short 6-month engagement period, French said they seemed more suspicious than happy for her.

“Everyone thought I was pregnant,” she said. Other family members thought she was going to drop out of school to go live with Peele at Fort Bragg.

French said she didn’t appreciate her family’s intrusive questions, but she didn’t let that change her plans.

“It sucks, but it’s also just the price I pay,” she said.

To the chapel

Soon after the engagement, the Army told Peele he was going to be deployed to Iraq. Duty was calling in less than six short months, and French was impatient.

“Our plan was to wait until I finished Carolina,” she said. “That was always our plan.”

But she just couldn’t wait to marry her best friend.

“As long as he was there with me, everything was fantastic – I was on cloud nine,” French said. “As soon as he left though, I was like ‘This is ridiculous. What are we doing?’”

When she picked up her husband from the airport after he spent a month in Texas for the Army, she told him she had a surprise. Peele said he had a feeling she was planning something when she started driving into the city, so he asked her if they were going to the courthouse to get married.

“No, we are not going to the courthouse to get married,” French told him. “What kind of woman do you think I am?”

She was driving him to get their marriage certificate. French referred to herself as the initiator in the relationship, and this action indicates why.

One week later, they were married in the mountains of North Carolina.

“We had been engaged for about six or seven months, and I knew she was the girl for me, but it scared me,” Peele said. “It was such a huge step at such a quick pace, but looking back I don’t think I would rather have done it any other way.”

While French and Peele have not had the traditional relationship, engagement or married life, they still manage to make it work. Living apart is not easy, but they have an understanding when it comes to being together while living separate lives.

When asked if he had any regrets, Peele said without hesitation, “Not a single one.”

After a few moments deep in thought, French said, “The only thing I regret is not wearing shapewear under my wedding dress.”

Edited by Paige Connelly