After the service, the pair followed friends to the ice cream parlor and spent the afternoon getting to know each other. When they parted ways,

The couple continued to date for the next year, exchanging their first kiss and falling in love. A year after thaat fateful meeting during Sunday service, Hubert enlisted in the U.S. Navy to fight in World War II. June stayed at home, taking a job building supplies for the war. After training and before deployment, Hubert and June knew they had to make a decision about their future.

“Time was going fast,” Hubert said. “We needed to make a decision about what to do. We decided it was time to get married.”

Hubert was shipped out to Honolulu, Hawaii shortly after, where he worked on torpedoes and submarines at Pearl Harbor. Although he wasn’t allowed to tell his loved ones where he was stationed, he managed to mail a grass skirt back home to June.

“If I could ship that back to [June], that just might give her some indication where I was,” remembered Hubert. “So, I packaged it up and shipped it to her and about two or three weeks [later], I got back a beautiful lady in a grass skirt. Well, that message went through, and we got the answer.”After the war, Hubert returned to Ohio via train. June was the only person who came to greet him at the train station, and it was the best homecoming he could ever want.