Staff Sgt. Ernie Ortiz and his wife, Rachel, at the Java Cafe in Baumholder, along with his 2-year-old son Julian, who is from a former marriage. Ortiz and his wife were high school sweethearts. And now, a decade later, they will be separating for the first time as a married couple, when Ortiz deploys to Afghanistan in several days. Photo courtesy of Ernie Ortiz (Photo courtesy of Ernie Ortiz)
Staff Sgt. Ernie Ortiz and his wife, Rachel, at the Java Cafe in Baumholder, along with his 2-year-old son Julian, who is from a former marriage. Ortiz and his wife were high school sweethearts. And now, a decade later, they will be separating for the first time as a married couple, when Ortiz deploys to Afghanistan in several days. Photo courtesy of Ernie Ortiz (Photo courtesy of Ernie Ortiz)
Ernie Ortiz and Rachel MacIntyre at the prom at Crockett High School in Austin, Texas. Photo courtesy of Ernie Ortiz (Photo courtesy of Ernie Ortiz)
BAUMHOLDER, Germany — Ernie Ortiz and Rachel MacIntyre were meant to be together. Just not right away, and not for long.
They fell in love at Crockett High School in Austin, Texas. Shortly after graduation, he joined the Army and proposed to her. She said yes, and then no.
That was a decade ago.
In 2010, they reconnected on a road trip, were engaged in less than a week and married in August. In a few days, the couple will be apart again, as Ortiz, a 29-year-old staff sergeant with HHB 1st Battalion, 84th Field Artillery Regiment, deploys to Afghanistan.
“We’ve loved each other from afar for so long,” said Rachel, 28, “that we are sort of used to being away from each other.”
Prom night 2000
Ortiz was the prom king, and MacIntyre, beautiful in her baby blue dress, was his date.
“I was one of the more popular guys,” he said. “And she was the nerdy choir girl.” After high school, MacIntyre went off to study opera at the University of North Texas. Before his first deployment, Ortiz proposed to her. MacIntyre, 18, soon broke off the engagement, fearing she was too young.
“That was the end of it,” Ortiz said, “for a very long time. But I pined over her.”
Ortiz later married a German woman, and they had two children. MacIntyre gave up opera, graduating instead from the Texas Culinary Academy. She built a business as a personal chef.
The pair spoke occasionally by phone and met for coffee when Ortiz returned to Texas.
“In nine years,” he said, “we met maybe four or five times.”
Ortiz’s marriage fell apart during his last deployment to eastern Afghanistan.
Newly divorced in the fall of 2009, Ortiz was stationed at New York’s Fort Drum. He called MacIntyre, wondering what had become of his high school sweetheart.
She offered to accompany him on a road trip back home. In March, she flew to New York and hopped into his truck.
“We hadn’t really seen each other,” he said. “So this was a big step.”
The trip lasted five days, with the pair stopping several times along the way. In Asheville, N.C., they visited a restaurant called the Tupelo Honey Café.
“I bought a mug there,” Rachel said, “because I wanted to remember that moment.”
The next day, they decided to get married. Their interrupted engagement ended in August 2010, when the pair was wed in the backyard of Ortiz’s parents’ home, where they had enjoyed family barbecues as teenagers.
Deployment looms
Rachel MacIntyre, now Rachel Ortiz, closed her business in Texas and moved to Baumholder, packing only her clothes and her cooking knives. She tried her best to ignore the fact that her husband would be leaving for Afghanistan within a year. “Anytime it came up, I was like, ‘Just leave me in the dark,’ ” she said. “I didn’t want to know about his new uniforms, I didn’t want to know about planning his will.”
But with the deployment looming — the Baumholder brigade has already started to leave — Rachel couldn’t avoid the truth. Recently the couple watched “Restrepo,” a documentary about a platoon deployed to the Korengal Valley, so she could see what it was like for a soldier in Afghanistan.
To stay in touch with her husband, she plans to send him photos of her travels throughout Europe, during which she hopes to work on a farm in Spain. Before he deploys, they will spend Valentine’s Day at a spa in Lyon, France, and sit down to their first French meal together. Rachel, who is trained in classical French cooking, said she is eager to try the rustic cuisine, including offal, which are sausages made from pig intestines.
“Because we spent so much time apart,” she said, “we’re trying to pack in all the firsts that we can with each other.”
