01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, August 29, 2004

Lisa Morey and Jeff Floyd

Twelve Acres, Smithfield

7.3.04

Lisa Morey and Jeff Floyd have been together for a little over four years, but much of that time has not really been together. Lisa, originally from Warwick, is a dispatcher with the Johnston Police Department. Jeff, from East Providence, is Lt. Floyd on the Johnston police force.

He is also 1 LT Jeff Floyd with the 119th Military Police Company of the Rhode Island National Guard, and it is that role that kept them apart for so much of their relationship.

"From September 2001 until January 2002, he was in Missouri doing some kind of special officer training," says Lisa. "One month later, he went to Utah for the Olympics as part of security. In March, he became the aide-de-campe to General Baccus in Cuba. That lasted until October. He came home for four whole months before he was deployed to Iraq in February 2003." They got engaged on February 4, ten days before he became part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was gone for 14 months.

She's 35, he's 39. It's a second marriage for both, and Jeff has a five-year-old son, who lives with Jeff and Lisa. They met at the Police Department. "He horrified me, he was intimidating. But we both worked the 4-12 shift, and that group tends to hang out together outside of work. We got to know each other, and fell in love."

Today, Jeffrey Jencks, brigade chaplain and major in the Rhode Island Army National Guard as well as rector at St. John's Episcopal Church in Cumberland, will officiate. Jencks himself served for more than a year in Kuwait and Iraq, which is where he met Jeff Floyd.

Jeff says he was not very religious before going to Iraq, but there, Jencks became integral to his spiritual well-being. "You know the saying 'There are no atheists in foxholes,' " says Jeff. "Well, there are certainly no atheists in Iraq."

Jencks arrives early, in uniform, and strolls across the parking lot, down the grassy slope to where chairs are set up for the ceremony at Twelve Acres. He carries a very large, well-worn teddy bear under his arm. During the ceremony, Jencks clutches the teddy bear and compares it -- and marriage -- to The Velveteen Rabbit, about how love makes us become real.

The 300 guests at their late afternoon ceremony and reception include the entire Johnston police department and friends from the 119th, the 115th, the 118th, and, says Lisa, "even General Baccus," who will give the blessing before dinner.

Later, after a week in the Bahamas, where the highlight of the honeymoon was swimming with dolphins in the Caribbean, Jeff says he is ready to stay right here in Rhode Island for a while, spending a lot of time with Lisa and Jason, who will start kindergarten this fall.

"I'm ready to go back to being a police officer in Johnston," says Jeff. "Where I'm not having any RPG's shot at me."