Bride-to-be’s dreams of being married on Nov. 6 were destroyed by war

By Katya Cengel kcengel@courier-journal.com

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. - On Nov. 6, Stacey Martinez was supposed to walk down the aisle at First United Methodist Church in Frankfort. A picture of the white, floor-length wedding gown the 25-year-old was going to wear is posted on the refrigerator at her mother’s house. The reception hall, bridesmaid dresses, tuxedos and honeymoon location were all chosen. A deposit was made at the church. Martinez even has the ring; she wears it on her slender ring finger.

On her right hand.

Her fiancé, Jeffrey Graham, a 2nd lieutenant in the Army, was killed Feb. 19 when an explosive device blew up in front of him while he was on foot patrol in central Iraq. Two days later, Martinez and her mother were supposed to choose the menu for the wedding reception. Instead, they prepared for the funeral - held at the same church where the couple was to be married.

The day after Graham died, Martinez received a letter from him postmarked Jan. 28. She keeps the letter with all his others in a camouflage Army bag in her closet. In it, her 24-year-old fiancé had written: "I can’t wait for Nov. 6. It will be the happiest moment of my life."

Now it will be one of the hardest of Martinez’s. Instead of taking the hand of the man to whom she had been engaged for three years, she will lay flowers on his grave. Other than that, she has no plans for the day - or the future.

"Memories don’t hurt," she says. "What hurts the most is thinking about the future that’s not there anymore."

More than 1,000 men and women from the U.S. military, the majority of them Army, have been killed since the war in Iraq began in March 2003. Wives and husbands of the fallen usually are offered flags, medals and counseling.

Fiancés often aren’t even notified.

No one knows how many there are, and no list keeps track of them. They are the forgotten survivors.

Stacey Martinez is one of them.

’This would have been my wedding ring’

Martinez has had her life mapped out pretty much since ninth grade, when she decided she wanted to be a pharmacist after volunteering in the pharmacy at a local hospital. Despite losing Graham toward the end of her studies, she graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy in May with a doctorate of pharmacy and received her license in June. Now she has a two-year work commitment at a Walgreens drugstore just up the street from the Elizabethtown home she shares with her mother.

When her contract is up, she says, she doesn’t know what she will do.

"I’m not ready to live by myself yet," she says. "If it wasn’t for my mom, I probably wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning."

When you enter Martinez’s home, Graham’s smiling face beams from a photograph on a small table directly in front of the door. Next to it sits a wood carving of his face. In the living room, there’s another picture of him and Martinez at a formal dance, and upstairs, in a small room off to the side, are more pictures of the happy couple.

A fuzzy blue UK blanket sits atop a yellow comforter decorated with flowers. It belonged to Graham. An Army brat, Graham called many places home but had a special attachment for his mother’s home state of Kentucky. He was a lifelong University of Kentucky fan even before he attended the university and met Martinez.

The couple met at a back-to-school party in August 1999. Martinez was a junior, Graham a sophomore. The pair soon discovered they had a lot in common. Not only had both their fathers served, or were still serving, in the military, but both sets of their parents had gone to Murray State University. And though they didn’t know each other, they knew of each other.

"You don’t meet many people like you who have been through so many of the same experiences," says Martinez, her wide-set brown eyes growing large. "Literally from that point on we were together all the time. We were never apart."

Her room is filled with mementos to prove it. Graham’s class ring, pictures of the two of them at formal dances, on vacation in the Bahamas, with family and friends. They were together so often that Martinez said Graham had trouble keeping their engagement a secret. When he went to get the ring with his younger brother, Kevin, she says, it was the one time she wasn’t allowed to go along.

He proposed in mid-February 2001, Martinez says, noting that the date is very close to the one on which he died.

The couple planned to use the diamond from the engagement ring for the wedding ring; only they planned to change the band. Martinez had been unwilling to give up her ring to have the band changed when Graham was alive, but a few weeks ago she had it reset, just as they had discussed.

"This would have been my wedding ring," she says, holding out her hand.

Before she had the ring reset, Martinez hadn’t taken it off her left ring finger. When she got it back, she moved it to her right hand.

"I said I can’t do this forever."

’Lt. Sandifur’s’ message

During the three years they were engaged, Martinez said, they planned to marry many times. But each time it was postponed. They wanted to marry after Graham graduated from UK in May 2003, but the Army didn’t tell him where he would be going until the last minute, which made planning the big family wedding they wanted almost impossible. So they waited.

Graham spent four months training at the Army Armor Center in Fort Knox, and Martinez moved in with her mother in Elizabethtown while she finished her last year of pharmacy school. A little over a month later, on June 21, 2003, Graham’s younger brother, 21-year-old Kevin, hung himself. Martinez said the brothers, who lived together while attending UK, were extremely close.

"There are no words to describe how close they were," she says.

After his brother died, Jeffrey Graham was given the option of staying at Fort Knox and out of the war. Instead, he went to Fort Riley, Kansas, in October. Within a week, Martinez says, they knew he was going to Iraq.

Before Graham deployed, Martinez made two trips to Kansas. On one of the trips, Martinez asked Graham to make her a stuffed toy bear at a Build-A-Bear Workshop store. She named the sandy-colored toy Lt. Sandifur. When you squeeze Lt. Sandifur’s right paw, the bear plays a message Graham recorded at the shop.

"Hey, Sweetie, it’s me. I just want to say that I’m safe and I love you very much and I’ll see you soon. Bye."

When Graham was in Iraq, Martinez squeezed the paw nightly. Now she hardly ever does.

"I’m afraid it will go out," she says.

She also doesn’t wash the dark gray sweat shirt Graham wore when he went to Iraq, which she wears to bed every night along with another blue sweat shirt that belonged to him.

"I have a bottle of his cologne he left here as well," she says, Lt. Sandifur snuggled in her arms. "I spray that on them every once in a while so I can smell him."

Martinez also has all the letters they sent each other, letters that toward the end talked about the details of their wedding. There was only one aspect that Martinez said she kept hesitating on - the honeymoon.

"I hadn’t booked it yet. I kept on postponing it," she says. "I guess there is a reason why I never said, ’Let’s do it.’"

Before Graham was deployed, the couple talked about going to a courthouse and getting married, but Martinez said they decided to stick to their original plans and wait to have the family ceremony. It is a decision she regrets daily.

"My mom says it doesn’t make it easier if you’re married or not, she says it hurts the same," says Martinez. "But just to be able to say..."

’In my heart she was Jeff’s wife’

Martinez learned of Graham’s death through his mother, Carol Graham. It was she who requested that Martinez be given an official military flag at the funeral, something usually reserved for wives or, if the soldier isn’t married, mothers. In this case, both Carol Graham and Martinez received flags.

Carol Graham also consulted Martinez about the funeral arrangements and sat next to her at the cemetery.

"Because in my heart, she was Jeff’s wife," Graham said during a phone interview from her home in Oklahoma. "And in each other’s hearts, they were married."

Although the military does not officially acknowledge fiancés, Carol Graham makes sure Martinez is invited to every memorial and even gave Martinez one of Jeff Graham’s medals. Being close to Jeff’s family makes it easier, says Martinez.

Though she understands why the Army cannot do more for fiancés, she is still hurt by the lack of formal acknowledgment.

"It hurts," she says. "Our relationship is not on paper but our love is so much stronger than some people who are married."

Carol Graham does as much as she can to ease that pain. She knows certain dates and reminders are hard for Martinez. Weddings are the worst.

"You want to be happy," says Martinez. "But there is jealousy and anger. Why are they able to have a happy life and marry and I can’t?"

It is a question she is reminded of daily. Jeffrey Graham’s unit - Company C, 1st Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, Fort Riley, Kan. - returned from Iraq in September. Fall was the time Martinez planned to travel to Kansas and finish planning her wedding with Jeffrey.

"I wanted that happy planning time," she says.

Instead, Martinez is trying to plan a way to make that day come and go as painlessly as possible. Carol Graham hopes she can help. On what would have been her eldest son’s wedding day she plans to give Martinez a quilt being made by a group of Virginia quilters whom she knows from the days when her husband Mark was stationed there. The quilt is being made from pieces of Graham’s uniforms and his favorite clothes.

"I’ve mailed (the women) Kentucky shirts, his favorite blue jeans, uniforms, anything I ever remember Jeffrey wearing," says Carol Graham. "It will be gorgeous."

No matter how much time passes, Carol Graham says she will always consider Martinez her daughter-in-law.

"It just breaks my heart we are not going to have a wedding on Nov. 6," she says. "I just hold onto Stacey, and she is holding on to us real tight."

http://www.courier-journal.com/features/2004/10/17/forgotten2.html