Petty Officer 2nd Class Johnny Oliver’s black guitar still sits on its stand in a corner of Jazmin Oliver’s Jacksonville home.
Pictures of him still hang on the wall and his favorite dog, Ollie the Chihuahua, still scampers around the house and climbs up on visitors’ laps.
Johnny Oliver’s name will be one of four added to the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Wall as part of the city’s Memorial Day ceremonies.
“It’s really hard to accept it,” she said. “I don’t know if I still have. Part of me thinks the military is lying, they needed him for something special and he’ll be back.
“But it’s been a year, and … the day his unit got back I went to the airport and he wasn’t there,” she said.
The couple met when the sailor from Kentucky got back to Kings Bay Submarine Base after a yearlong deployment to Greece.
Oliver sold his car before he deployed, so Jazmin had to pick him up for their first date in the Wal-Mart parking lot just outside the base.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said with a laugh.
But she soon fell for the light-hearted country boy from Kentucky with the infectious smile. “I was the luckiest girl in the world,” she said.
They met in March 2012 and were married by the following March. They rented an apartment near Jacksonville Beach and began to plan their life.
“We wanted to wait a little while to have children and enjoy each other a little first,” she said. “After all, we had the rest of our lives.”
Soon after their marriage, Johnny Oliver’s unit shipped out to Bahrain.
The U.S. Navy maintains a presence on the island nation located between Qatar and Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf.
U.S. personnel off post are told not to wear American flag shirts, American sports teams apparel or anything that make them stand out as an American.
“But Johnny was tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed. All you have to do is look at him and you know he’s American,” she said.
What happened on May 7, 2013, the day her life changed, still hasn’t been resolved.
“Basically what happened was he’d just gotten off work and changed his clothes and was going to dinner with friends,” she said. “He was crossing the street and some lieutenant in the Bahraini police just sped up to 70 and hit him.”
The investigation is continuing.
“They’re [the Navy] trying to make it look like it was just an accident,” she said.
But some sailors with knowledge of the situation told her the driver was trying to hit the young sailor.
“The word is that it was a hate crime, an act of terrorism,” she said. “A lot of the higher-ups in the Navy told me that.”
Ironically, the man who killed her husband was supposed to be put on trial Friday. But the trial again was pushed back.
She said she wants to be there when the trial takes place.
“I want to be there. I want to make a victim’s statement,” she said. “I’m the only person Johnny has left to fight for him.”
Whatever the outcome of the trial, Jazmin Oliver will now have a place to go in Jacksonville to remember her husband — the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Wall.
His body was buried in Kentucky.
“It’s just nice to have somebody remember him,” she said. “Harrison [Conyers of the city’s Military and Veterans Affairs department] has been great making this happen.
“Johnny is in great company.”
Clifford Davis: (904) 359-4207
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Thank you for your service and sacrifice, Mr. AND Mrs. Oliver.