ORANGE : Wedding Is Postscript to War Story
At Susan Randolph’s house, newspaper articles usually end up lining the bottom of an owl cage.
But Randolph, known to some as the bird lady of Orange, saved one news story from that undignified fate--and discovered a fiance.
An April 11 Times story introduced her to Marine Cpl. Brett Doggett, a Persian Gulf War vet awarded the Purple Heart after stepping on a mine in Kuwait. The accident cost Doggett his left foot and left pieces of shrapnel embedded in his right one, but Doggett talked about his future with optimism, not bitterness.
Randolph liked what she read. She sent Doggett a copy of an article The Times ran about her house full of recuperating birds.
“I thought he might be interested in what I do,” she recalled. “I wanted to let him see that there are other things that get broken and fixed up too.”
The rest is romance.
First Randolph’s card was lost among hundreds of fan letters Doggett received from all over the country, including several that mentioned marriage proposals. Persisting, Randolph reached Doggett at the Naval Hospital in San Diego by phone.
“I asked him if there was anything I could bring him,” Randolph recalled, “And he said ‘Yes. A redhead.’ ”
But Doggett says he wasn’t too disappointed with Randolph, a 37-year-old, green-eyed blonde. Within three months they were engaged.
“I always thought I’d be 35 and well on the road with a career by the time I got married,” said Doggett, 26.
The couple say they began as friends and admit that some family members were shocked at their quick announcement. But they say their plans are solid.
“I don’t think it’s how much time you have been together,” said Randolph, who is twice divorced. “It’s what you do with the time you have. We’ve had to deal with money and family and trauma . . . all the big things that most people deal with over the first two or three years of marriage. And we’ve come through with flying colors.”
As they perched side by side on a couch in the home they share in Orange, the couple disagreed about who did the pursuing in the relationship. Randolph says Doggett flirted and mentioned marriage from the first time they met. He points out that she popped the question.
From other rooms in the house, members of Randolph’s feathered family offered their opinions. Parrots Nudgie and Merlin squawked from the kitchen, while Love Bug, a 11-year-old barn owl, listened more quietly from his roost in the bathroom.
Not everything in the couple’s lives fits the fairy-tale format. On Sept. 26, Doggett will retire from the Marine Corps, a decision he reached only after admitting that, with his injury, he could no longer serve in the active combat role he had been trained for.
And since his return, life has been complicated by a series of bureaucratic snafus. There is no medical record of the day he stepped on the land mine, for example, he said.
Without proof that amputation of his left foot was necessary, Doggett fears his Social Security benefits could be in jeopardy. Between bird care and wedding preparations, Randolph spends hours every week trying to track down paperwork and untangle red tape, while Doggett pursues a political science degree at Cal State Fullerton.
Wedding invitations are to be mailed this week for a sunset ceremony on the Hawaiian island of Maui on Nov. 10, the Marine Corps’ birthday. The birds are not invited.