The Short Life of Cherry Blossoms

Petty Officer First Class Jacob Shaw was a Navy air traffic controller stationed at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada. His professional career was on the fast track, but his personal life was in shambles, living in a marriage that should have never happened and was failing. Jake had been selected as the Navy's representative to the Federal Aviation Administration's National Controllers Operational Procedures Committee or COPCOM and traveled twice a year to Washington, DC, for the meeting. On his second trip to Washington, he met a woman who grabbed his heart and invaded his soul. They spent the next year in a tumultuous love affair that Jake still carries in his heart to this day. MS. Teresa Murkowski, or Tee as she preferred to be called, was an administrative assistant who'd recently been hired to support COPCOM.During the spring meeting, when Tee walked into the conference room, Jake's heart skipped a beat. After sharing lunch together under the Tidal Basin's cherry blossoms, they embarked on an intense love affair that opened Jake's eyes to what love could be. Although Jake and Tee faced huge hurdles including Jake still being married and living 2,500 miles apart, he had a plan to resolve these almost insurmountable challenges and keep Tee in his life. Then during the fall meeting, when an early and unusual major snowstorm hit DC, Jake had to face the reality of what lay ahead for them.Along the way with Washington DC, Atlanta, and the Pacific Northwest as a backdrop, Jake was able to gain support to be a commissioned naval officer from a powerful US senator, establish a strong rapport with Navy and FAA movers and shakers, and experience loving and being loved at a level he'd never known.