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Meant to Be

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Lauren Morrill

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“During the years of solitary confinement we had communicated with other POWs using a tap code -- tapping on the walls. During the time I was tortured I mainly tapped on the wall with Howie Dunn, a marine F-4 pilot. I poured out my heart to him. We talked about what the Vietnamese were doing to us, we talked about food, we talked about women, we talked about our past lives and what we wanted to do in the future. We tapped for hours. At one point I said, "Howie, what do you look like?" He tapped back and said, "Actually, I look a lot like John Wayne." We were moved away from each other, and I didn't talk to him for about five years. Right before we were coming home the Vietnamese allowed us to all get out together in a big compound and "greet one another" as they said. So I'm standing there talking to some people and this guy walks up to me -- he's short and bald and nondescript, a complete and absolute stranger. I had never laid eyes on him before. He sticks out his hand and says, "Hi, I'm Howie Dunn." In a flash, there he was, my best friend. [Porter Halyburton, US Navy pilot POW in North Vietnam, 1965 - 1973]”

FriendshipCouragePrisonerPrison LifePows
Book:Vietnam: The Definitive Oral History, Told from All Sides
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“Cliopher had not been right, after all, about what fanoa meant. Not right at all. He felt sick with loss, as if his heart had been pierced and all his wistful dreams had gushed out of it, disappearing into the sand below their feet. It did not matter, Cliopher told himself fiercely, that they were lovers as well as friends. They could still be the greatest of friends. They could still be fanoa, reaching across cultures and across oceans and even across the divide between the human worlds and Sky Ocean, the realms of the gods. And yet- People understood the idea that a lover might follow his beloved anywhere. It had always been a strange and difficult idea that one might love a friend that deeply. That was how people always talked about romantic, sexual love. As if that sort of love was necessarily better, greater, more, than friendship. As if being the greatest of friends was a step down. It had always been so important to Cliopher that Elonoa'a and Aurelius Magnus were celebrated for their great friendship, and that no one had ever hinted at that sort of romance. Even for the Islanders there were many stories of lovers loving that profoundly... and there was this one story of the greatest of friends, the human iteration of Ani and Vou'a's friendship. Cliopher had never thought it was a step down. He had wanted-”

LoveFriendshipPlatonic Love
Book:At the Feet of the Sun
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