Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 7, 1990 TAG: 9006070019
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LONDON LENGTH: Medium
"If I could hire a dinghy boat, I would row the Atlantic to get back. That's how I feel," Millicent Ramsey said Wednesday.
She said she's been stranded in London since Feb. 17, and has been unable to get a visa to return to her husband in Charlotte, N.C.
She married George Ramsey last Sept. 14 and had applied for U.S. residency, then returned to England five months later for a family celebration. When her sister suffered a heart attack, she said in a telephone interview, she stayed past the date she was to return to the United States.
On her last visit to the Immigration and Naturalization Service Office in London, she said, she was told they were waiting for an FBI report.
The U.S. Embassy press office said it could not comment on the case because of the Privacy Act.
"It's the darnedest thing," George Ramsey, 65, said in Charlotte. "The lady has never done anything wrong in her life. All my neighbors keep on asking where my wife is."
Millicent Ramsey, 61, said it was love at first sight when she saw the young GI on Christmas Eve, 1943 at the Red Lion public house in Hampton, 15 miles southwest of London.
"I thought, what a great guy, if only I could have met him. And I looked again and he was gone," she said.
Two days later, she found him standing behind her in a bus line. They made a date for New Year's Eve, she said, and the romance blossomed.
On a Wednesday in March 1944, she said, she went with Ramsey while he asked his commanding officer for a leave so they could marry on a Friday.
"So Friday evening came, and no George," she said.
His unit had been shipped to France. Later that year, she gave birth to their son.
"He did get back on a very short leave to see and hold his son," she said, but her parents decided she was too young to marry - she was in her teens - and would not permit her to join him.
The two lost touch and married other people in their own countries. Her marriage ended in divorce, while he became a widower.
Three years ago, Millicent Ramsey said, her son contacted his father in North Carolina, and a correspondence began.
"He wrote to me asking if I wanted to see him and we found out that we still loved each other," she said.
"He went his way and I went mine, but we still both loved each other. We married [the first time] on the rebound."
Millicent Ramsey said a U.S. immigration official told her it might take three or four more weeks to clear the paper work.
"Why won't they let me back to my husband?" she said. "We're not getting any younger, and this time that we're losing is very valuable to us."
by CNB