Kyle's BFF

In the Marine Corps, Kyle and I both make friends, but our friendships are a bit different.  My friends are wives who are always on island, never leave unless they go to visit family, and most of them are stay-at-home moms or in search of jobs, so we can usually hang out whenever we'd like.  I see the majority of my friends multiple times a week, which is very unusual for the civilian life.  I adore seeing my friends and being able to walk to their house on base at any given moment to say hello or just hang out for a bit or meet at Starbucks on base for a nice coffee and conversation.  I'm definitely going to miss that when we move and I start my teaching career.

Kyle on the other hand, the majority of his friends are Marines and they are all in different companies than he is so they are off training or deployed at different times as he is.  So needless to say, many of the times Kyle is home, his close friends aren't home.  Mike Gunther is one of those friends. 

Kyle and Mike met at OCS (Officer Candidate School) Juniors in the summer of 2007 and then we a part of the same platoon at OCS Seniors in 2008.  They became good friends and have remained close with one another since then. 

Look how young they are!

Both of Mike's parents are retired Colonels from the Marine Corps and they live in Arlington, VA.  Kyle got to meet his parents after OCS Seniors.  Here they are with "Colonel Gunther" as Kyle refers to him. 

Since OCS, Kyle has only seen Mike a few other times.  Kyle went down to California and met up with Mike to go to Catalina Island during Spring Break our senior year of college in 2009, then we ended up getting stationed in Hawaii where Mike was stationed.  The only problem was he was deployed to Afghanistan when we arrived.  When he finally got back from deployment, Kyle left a month later for 3 months of training and when Kyle got back to the island, Mike left a month later for United Arab Emirates for a year long deployment.  

 Here we are at his going away party before he left for UAE in June 2012.

Mike got back from UAE in mid July when Kyle was on the Big Island for training.  Luckily, Kyle returned on my birthday (the 26th) and Mike was here for a couple more weeks before he got completely checked out of the Marine Corps to start his next chapter in life.  Mike spent his last four nights on island at our house.  It was great to get to know him a little better and I know Kyle is going to miss him, event though they didn't spend that much time in person together anyway, but it'll still be different with him out of the Marine Corps and living in Virginia, until he begins to travel for a few months while he applies to government agencies.  

 Kyle was a bit jealous Mike picked up Captain before he got out...Kyle wants those two bars :)

I pray that Kyle and Mike can keep in touch and stay friends, even if we end back up on the west coast in Oregon and he ends up staying on the east coast in Virginia.  I'm gonna leave you with an excerpt from what Mike wrote in our guestbook, that I made him fill out and I'm glad he did!

"Some people are your friends because they're good for you at specific times in your life and some people are your friends because they're always good for you.  Thanks for being the latter guys."

- Mike Gunther