Staying Fit
Courtesy: Johnson and McIntyre
In the summer of 1977, midshipmen Glenn McIntyre, who was in the ROTC program at Miami University of Ohio, and Edward Johnson, studying at Virginia Military Institute, were mistaken for each other.
The lookalikes were going through a summer of military experiences, including visiting air and submarine bases from Texas to California, to learn about service options. They became fast friends and swapped rugby shirts.
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Nearly five decades later, they babysit each other’s grandchildren and talk about the old days.
After that summer 47 years ago, they traded letters. A year later, coincidentally, they both found themselves in Washington D.C. to be interviewed by the same admiral for admission to the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program. As fate would have it, they both got in.
The parallel journeys continued. McIntyre met his wife Cindy soon after and Johnson married Judy. The two weddings were on the same day. In 1979, they were stationed together at the Nuclear Power School in Orlando.
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The two couples ended up being assigned apartments within 100 feet of each other. The young naval officers’ friendship deepened, and their wives became best friends too.
“Our first Thanksgiving was in our apartment. We had folding tables, and Ed and Judy were there,” McIntyre told AARP Experience Counts .
Johnson remembers a Thanksgiving game of yard football that year and a sprained ankle. The two couples would spend Friday nights at the officers’ club. At the end of their time there, both men were selected for work on nuclear reactors in New York.
The two husbands found out soon that their wives were pregnant with exactly the same due date. Then, they started alternating deployments on a submarine off the coast of Scotland, and the two friends would only overlap ashore for one night to catch up.
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