Worth More Dead

Pensacola, Florida, for four months. Home of the Blue Angels, the navy’s incredibly synchronized jet flying squad, Pensacola had charming old houses and white-sugar-sand beaches. They were lucky, too, when Dennis was assigned to a naval base in Corpus Christi, Texas. Again, they stayed just four months before another transfer.
    The first permanent home the Archers ever had was in Oak Harbor, Washington, where Dennis was a Navy Air Arm navigator.
    Oak Harbor and the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station became a true home base for the Archers. Their first child, a girl, Denise, was born there ten months later. Maria was saved the arduous chore of packing up, moving, settling in again every year or so, and the Archers remained in Oak Harbor for ten years, although Dennis was often away on deployment. Maria estimated later that Dennis’s duties kept him away from home for at least four of their ten and a half years of marriage. Service wives have to accept that. When they cannot, their marriages usually end in divorce.
    Dennis Archer rose rapidly through the ranks, and he was a lieutenant commander by the late spring of 1980. He and Maria purchased a home on North Fairwood Place in Oak Harbor, and she was involved in activities both as an officer’s wife and as a member of the community. On the witness stand, Maria recalled that her marriage was one where she literally worshipped her husband. She said she had always placed Dennis “on a pedestal.” That attitude may have been the last vestige of her Bolivian upbringing.
    She was totally devoted to her two children (a son was born a few years after Denise). Besides keeping an immaculate house, Maria loved to cook, to paint, and to study. She particularly enjoyed reading in the field of psychology, as she was fascinated by human behavior.
    Surprisingly for a woman who appeared so delicate, Maria Elena had always been interested in exercise and physical activity; she took Middle Eastern dancing lessons (belly dancing is the more familiar term) and followed those up with jazz, tap, hula, and folk dancing. She became so adept that she taught dance classes at the Katherine Johnson Dance Studios in Oak Harbor and at Skagit Valley Community College in Mount Vernon, Washington. She directed and planned a Spanish night at the officers club and sewed costumes for and performed in local pageants and drama groups.
    Like all service wives, she had to make a life for herself and her children, one that was not dependent on her husband. When Dennis was home, they were a regular family. But for much of the time she was basically a single mother.
    “I was alone so much,” she remembered. “I spent a lot of time doing things with my children; I like to help other people and to get involved in the community.”
    As idyllic as it sounded, things were not rosy in the Archer marriage. Their story is far from unique. Maria took much of the blame for the trouble, wondering if their relationship had faltered because she worshipped Dennis too much. “We weren’t on the same level. There was a lack of communication,” Maria said softly. “Dennis wasn’t willing to work out the marriage problems. His job was very important to him, and there was family pressure. We had counseling about four or five years ago, but I just couldn’t get close to him.”
    As Dennis Archer trained to leave on another deployment in November 1979, Maria prepared to be alone again. She and the children would be alone for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. She testified that she was never unfaithful to her husband, even during the long months while he was away. To forestall temptation in a life without sex she deliberately kept herself very busy.
    Maria explained that one of the activities that took up her time after the midsummer of 1979 were the judo classes that she—and the children—attended several times a week. The classes were very popular with service dependents in Oak Harbor. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Roland Pitre’s instruction in self-defense and martial arts drew packed houses. His reputation was such that there were waiting lists for his classes.
    Maria recalled that she initially went to the judo classes because of her interest in sports. She said she also went because she was sometimes frightened at night when she was all alone in the house with the youngsters.

    Roland Pitre was the instructor, and Maria was only one of many judo students. Then something changed—gradually, subtly, at first.