Anna and Nick Glenn met at a dance during World War II – on Nov. 11, 1944, to be precise – when he was home in the wooded Northern California town of Burney on leave from the Navy. Someone grabbed his sailor hat, and it made its way across the crowded dance floor on top of young women's heads.
Anna DuVall, a pretty, 19-year-old Arkansas native who worked grading lumber at a Burney mill during the war, was wearing the hat when the music stopped. And the rest is history.
"He was with somebody else that night," remembered Anna Glenn, now 85, who sold real estate after their two daughters were grown. "But he had to retrieve that hat or he wouldn't be allowed back on base. So he said, 'Where's the damn woman who has my hat?' "
Picture young Nick, tall and handsome in uniform, bellowing good- naturedly across the dance floor. Picture feisty Anna replying in kind. They still bicker all these years later in their comfortable home in Roseville's Eskaton Village.
"So I went to get the hat," said Nick Glenn, now 87, a retired insurance executive.
"I thought he was kind of cocky," said his wife.
The World War II generation saved the world and came home to work hard, stabilize the country and give birth to the baby boom. In a real way, their love stories are the basis of American life today, a lasting Valentine to the generations to come.
Read the complete story at the sacbee.com
