Tagged: StoryCorps

Ron Cushman's journey to teaching started when he was wounded in the Vietnam War. He joined the Marines in 1968, at the age of 19. He was severely injured the following year.

"I was a scout in the Marine Corps, and I must have stepped on a land mine or a booby trap. That's all I remember," he says.

Cushman's right hand was mangled and eventually amputated.

Henry Flores was walking down the hallway at St. Mary's University in San Antonio when he noticed that the last office in the hallway's door was open.

"I just kind of looked inside to see who was in there, and I saw a flash of ankle, and I saw this blond hair, and I went smack-dab into the wall," says Flores, who is now a professor of political science and dean of the graduate school at St. Mary's.

It was the mid-1980s and Gwendolyn Diaz, who had just joined the university faculty, was sitting in the office.

When Steven Ketcham met Alexandra Budny's mother, she told him, "I'm going to be your future mother-in-law." There was just one catch: Steven had never met Alexandra. But their parents had already decided that their children were a good match.

Eventually, Steven and Alexandra agreed with that idea. But it took some time — and those early days of their relationship came up when the couple visited StoryCorps to discuss how their parents got them together.