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Marine, volleyball star a perfect match

Contributed photo Emily and Aaron Shade.

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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 8:06 PM Saturday, November 7, 2009

CEDARVILLE — Every night she said she makes sure to turn her cell phone up “full blast,” then lays it on the night stand next to her bed and tries to drift off to sleep — a sleep that sometimes comes in fits and sometimes never comes at all — as she waits for his call.

“He called last night at 3 a.m.,” Emily Shade said with a smile that quickly melted into a yawn as she sat in the Callan Athletic Center at Cedarville University a couple of afternoons past. “It was awesome just to hear his voice and be able to tell him how much I love him, how much I miss him.”

And on the other end of the distant connection, Aaron Shade — her husband of just seven months — does the same as he tries to immerse himself back into her world. That means hearing stories of their Greenville hometown, her final season of Cedarville volleyball and just sharing dreams about the two of them again being side by side in a marriage that began on a beautiful, sunny day on the beach in La Jolla, Calif., but, for the past 5 1/2 months, has been clouded by the dangers of the war in Afghanistan and the separation it has brought them.

Shade — a 24-year-old former Greenville High athlete and Wright State student — is now a U.S. Marine Corps corporal, serving at least an eight-month stint in southern Afghanistan, where, as Emily puts it, “he’s a mortar man.”

She said that’s all she knows because he doesn’t want her dwelling on his situation: “Like one time in a letter he said, ‘Don’t worry, Babe, they’re terrible shots over here.’ I know he’s probably not being real truthful, but he’s trying to encourage me. We’re each trying to get the other one through this as best we can.

“People say, ‘They ought to make a movie of you two,’ and I know if they did, it’d be one with some real surprises. I mean it’s been a crazy, crazy year. This time last year I hadn’t seen Aaron in four years.”

High school days

Emily Berger met Aaron Shade at Greenville High. She was 16 and he was 18 and a classmate of her older sister, Sally.

Both were athletes — she a standout volleyball player who also ran track and he a football, basketball and tennis player.

For nearly two years — as Aaron went off to Bowling Green and then WSU and Emily built a volleyball resume that drew college offers — they were an item. And then it was over.

“We broke up and it was all me,” she said. “I didn’t want to be tied down. I liked flirting. It was my immaturity and I know it hurt him, but then we each started dating other people.”

She said while it took some initial adjusting to settle into the Christian campus at Cedarville, she eventually began to develop both spiritually and as a Lady Jackets athlete.

Although her senior season has been plagued by a serious shoulder injury, she ranks ninth all-time at Cedarville with 1,428 kills.

“When she’s healthy, she’s spectacular,” Cedarville coach Doug Walters said.

He said she was never better than last year at the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) national tournament: “In the semifinals with Mount Vernon Nazarene, we were down two sets to nothing and about to lose the third and go home when she came alive. She put the team on her back and with her energy and motivation, she carried us through.”

The Jackets advanced to the finals and beat Dallas Baptist for the title. Emily was named the MVP of the national tournament.

And yet that wouldn’t be her biggest triumph last year.

Choosing marriage

Last Thanksgiving Day her family was gathered at her maternal grandparents’ home when Aaron — home on leave from Camp Pendleton in California — showed up.

Although he and Emily hadn’t seen each other since 2004, they had been in contact and, she said, “When he walked in it wasn’t awkward. Nobody was like ‘Why is he here?’ Everyone loves Aaron. It just felt natural. I remember jumping into his arms and hugging him and it just felt ... perfect.”

The two saw each other again when he retuned home at Christmas, but when he headed back to California in early January — knowing he soon would be deployed to Afghanistan — they left things up in the air.

“Right away, though, I realized I didn’t want to live without him,” she said. “We started talking about it and prayed over it and he finally said, ‘Emily, I’ve wanted to marry you since we first met. And the fact is, I could die in the next few months, so I’d rather be married to you that short time than to not experience it at all.’

“It was pretty crazy stuff, but we brought it up to everybody who mattered that we wanted to get married — now.”

Emily’s parents had some initial concerns. Her dad, Dr. Dan Berger, a former Alter High track star, has a family practice in Greenville.

“War is a very hard on people and my husband has had patients in their 80s who just start weeping about their war experiences,” said Jeni Berger, Emily’s mom. “We’ve always loved Aaron so much, but we worried what this experience could do to him. So we had a conference call with his parents.

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