Photo By Christopher Hurd | Jeffrey Ferren married Gabriella Kubinyi June 18, 2007 after 11 years of dating. After...... read more read more
Subscribe
WASHINGTON -- Finding love at a young age can be difficult, but for Gabriella Kubinyi the love she found was something truly special.
At 16, growing up in Teaneck, New Jersey, a friend talked her into taking a summer lifeguarding class. There, she ran into Jeffrey Ferren, someone she had met just six months before at a friend’s house.
The pair spent two to three days a week together for the next three months.
“We just had one of those [relationships] that when their arms are around you nothing else in the world matters,” she recalled. “We just clicked.”
After high school, they found ways to stay together despite being far apart.
While she was living in Charleston, South Carolina, Ferren drove through a hurricane just for a chance to see her.
“We were willing to do any and everything just to see each other,” she said. “When it doesn’t matter what you have to do, just being with that person is the most important thing, you’re willing to put down [everything] just to get to that person.”
Frustrated by the storm and being away from the person she loved she made a decision.
“I said ‘screw this’, I’m done being separated. I’m done with Charleston. I’m going home. I’m sorry, but you’re not getting the vacation you thought.”
He didn’t care, she said. He was just glad she was coming home.
For years they struggled to figure out who they were, what they wanted and how they were going to get there. But throughout the struggles they never lost each other.
“The easiest part was he always believed in me and I always believed in him,” she said.
Ferren’s search to provide them with a better life led him to the Navy. However, their struggles would continue.
He initially enlisted when he was 25, but got his contract revoked after failing a background check. After an appeal was denied they weren’t sure where to turn. So, they asked his recruiter who said ‘You can always call your congressman.’
They did. And after an investigation into the appeals process it was determined the appeals were being done incorrectly allowing Ferren, now 27, and a number of others to enlist.
“It was definitely a fight, but he did it,” she said. “He made it happen.”
The time apart during boot camp was hard on them. They weren’t used to not talking.
Seizing an opportunity to see him, she flew out to Chicago for his graduation even though, she had to fly back that day for a rehearsal dinner for her friend’s wedding.
“She wasn’t happy about that,” she laughed. “That was the thing though; I had to see him. I flew all the way to Chicago to see him for 30 minutes.”
When Ferren returned home he asked her to marry him. They went to a local courthouse to file the paperwork the next day — something that came as a shock to Kubinyi’s family.
“My Dad was like ‘Isn’t this a bit sudden?’” she recalled. “And we were like ‘Oh my God, it’s been 11 years … No!’”
Finally together, they were ready for their Navy journey to begin.
“I really embraced it and liked it. I was ready to go see the whole world and then he got stationed in Virginia, twice,” she laughed.
He would get to see the world however, visiting multiple countries on two deployments aboard two different ships. He excelled in his job as an engineman, getting promoted to petty officer second class.
As they were gearing up for a third deployment the unimaginable happened.
After going to bed early, which Ferren often did, he began to make weird noises. Watching TV in the living room, Kubinyi went to the bedroom to check on him and found her husband on his knees shaking with his face half pressed into the bed.
She thought he was having a bad dream. After trying to wake him, she quickly realized he wasn’t dreaming. She ran and dialed 911 before coming back to start CPR, something they both had learned together that summer during lifeguarding.
She continued CPR until paramedics arrived, but he passed away at the hospital at the age of 31 due to an undiagnosed heart condition.
He had reenlisted less than a year earlier and never had problems on his physical fitness tests.
“It was just one of those cases when perfectly healthy, young people drop dead,” she said.
The next year would prove to be the hardest of her life.
“I remember days where if I just made one phone call it was a successful day and a productive day,” she said. “That was making a phone call, getting a voice mail and leaving a voice mail.”
Searching for help she found comfort in being around other widows and gold star families.
“No matter what it is that you’ve been though in your life, the only people that you can ever talk to about it are the people who have been through the same situation,” she said. “So, one significant component of me being OK now is the widow community that I found.”
That community included the Tragedy Assistance Group Program for Survivors, Gold Star Wives of America and the American Widow Project.
They’re a place where “you don’t have to explain yourself and they just get it,” she said. “And when you can cry and they just get it. It’s the best place to be when the worst things happen.”
Now, four years since the passing of her husband, Kubinyi (who works at the Fleet and Family Services Center at NSA Bethesda) helps transitioning service members get the help they need.
She says it’s all for her husband.
“Even though he’s not here, everybody I work with could have been him, and I treat them the way you would have hoped he would have been treated,” she explained. “It all comes back to him.”
Reflecting on her experience Kubinyi shared a message: “Hold the ones you love and remember the most important thing — is not how much money you have or the clothes or the house — the only thing that matters when you’re gone are the memories and the love that you share with the people you care about.”
The memories and love she shared with her husband is something she will never forget.
“I have no regrets,” she said. “He KNEW that I loved him and I KNOW that he loved me and nothing else matters.”
| Date Taken: | 05.20.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 05.31.2016 11:24 |
| Story ID: | 199521 |
| Location: | DC, US |
| Hometown: | TEANECK, NJ, US |
| Web Views: | 78 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Hold tight the ones you love, by Christopher Hurd, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT