He never wanted to quit, but homelife kept tugging hard on the old vet's heart.

Pete Morakon loves the Army, all the camaraderie with the troops and his soldier brothers from the past.

Geri, he loves, too.

Their lifelong love affair - a marriage spanning 55 years - has taken a cruel turn, forcing Pete to make a difficult decision.

"I can't leave her alone," he said. "Otherwise, I'd drive on."

Last year, 79-year-old Geri underwent surgery for Stage 3 ovarian cancer. The cancer is in remission, Pete said, but she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

"She doesn't realize she has cancer," he said.

He fears that one day, left alone, Geri might turn on the stove and forget about it. He can't let that happen.

Not to his sweetheart. Not to the love of his life, as he calls her.

"He's given up something he loves for something he loves more," said Nora Sumrell, a technical editor with the Airborne Special Operations Test Directorate.

On Dec. 31, Pete officially retired from his job as a civilian test officer on Fort Bragg after 55 years of federal service. That includes a long stretch with Special Forces during 30 years in the Army. It's a career that includes 4,408 military free-fall jumps and 500 or so static-line jumps.

Pete's last two jumps came in Raeford on Nov. 20. There will be no more, he said.

For all purposes, he has already clocked out.

Retirement has begun.

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Following his retirement ceremony on Dec. 11, Col. Marshall A. Hagen, director of Airborne Special Operations Test Directorate, called Pete Morakon "a legacy."

Pete pooh-poohs such talk.

"I'm not a legend," he said from his home in the Wells Place neighborhood, where he and Geri have lived for 23 years. "I'm just a soldier doing my job. By doing something a long time doesn't make you a legend."

Pete and Geri Morakon's enduring relationship will forever be linked to his extended military and government careers, spanning the Korean and Vietnam wars through the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Geri has a twin brother, Gerald, whose own life has been changed dramatically by Alzheimer's. The progressive disease has erased his memory, and he no longer recognizes his twin sister or her husband.

The Morakons' eldest daughter, Susan, takes care of him at her Fayetteville home. When she goes to work, she drops her uncle off at the Southern Hospitality Adult Day Center.

Pete doesn't want anyone else taking care of his Geri.

That's why he decided to retire and become her full-time caretaker. She takes the medication Aricept, which Pete hopes will stymie the progression of the disease. So far, he said, the drug appears to be effective.

"And the most important thing is she knows who I am," he said.

"Don't worry," Geri piped in, "I'll never forget that."

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Just two days into retirement, Pete seemed a bit uncomfortable, a little on edge, at his home on the edge of Fayetteville.

He acknowledged that he's going to miss his duties at the test directorate, where he performed safety tests on equipment used by Airborne and Special Operations soldiers. Pete said he did everything for the private in the ranks - the simple soldier.

The work on post made him feel vital, and that he was still contributing to the modern Army. Even at the age of 78.

"Which meant a lot to me," Pete said.

In 1980, he retired as command sergeant major from the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. It had been a long military career, one he had hoped to extend for another five years.

But a selection board in Washington decided not to retain him. After three decades of active-duty service to his country, Pete was out.

He entered the service in June 1949. His father, John, and his mother, Anna, spoke broken English. Of Ukrainian descent, his parents had immigrated to this country from Austria in 1912.

John Morakon worked in the Pennsylvania coal mines. Pete, the youngest of their nine children, didn't want the same life.

He tried to join the Army in 1948, as a junior in high school. His mother caught wind of it, and urged her son to graduate from high school. Pete became the only member of his family to earn a high school diploma.

Afterward, he headed off to war. He fought in the Korean War as an infantry squad leader with the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team.

His fate was up in the air in Inje, Korea, when, in May 1951, his regiment was surrounded by attacking North Korean soldiers.

"You know when you're down to your last clip of ammunition ... " he said, without completing the thought. Fortunately, fresh supplies were dropped to the soldiers.

After receiving an honorable discharge in October 1952, Morakon re-enlisted a year later and was assigned to Fort Knox, Ky., for 30-day refresher training. While on leave one Thursday night, he met a youthful Geraldine Hogan in his hometown of Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

"When I met her, that was it," he said. "She was a beautiful girl, and I fell in love with her."

Ten days into their courtship, he asked her to marry him. With a grin, he recalled Geri telling him: "My God, I don't even know you!"

On Feb. 4, 1954, they became husband and wife.

A month later, he was assigned to the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Fort Bragg as a reconnaissance squad leader.

In March 1955, Geri gave birth to their first child, Susan. Seven years later, Jamie, their second and last child, was born. Pete had moved up in the ranks by then, to staff sergeant.

He attended the Special Forces Operations and Intelligence course in 1963 before being assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne).

"They were the only ones that really had a real-world mission, and that was in Southeast Asia," he said.

In 2007, he was inducted into the Special Forces Hall of Fame on Fort Bragg. He considers it one of the highlights of his life.

As for Geri, she spent two decades working Civil Service in post finance. She later took a job in accounting with Carolina Telephone before volunteering with the American Red Cross at Womack Army Medical Center.

In 1984, Pete started on his second career as a civilian test officer at the U.S. Army Airborne Board. For 25 years, he tested new parachutes and certified U.S., foreign and commercial aircraft. In all, he conducted more than 52 tests that included nearly every aspect of airborne operations.

"Everybody looks up to him," Hagen said. "What he's done, and what he did here."

It was those years of Civil Service work at the test directorate that were celebrated earlier this month. Pete touched a lot of lives in his distinguished career, Hagen said during the ceremony that honored "a special couple, Pete and Geri Morakon."

That memory is fading for Geri.

"What was that last ceremony we went to?" she asked Pete four days later at home.

"That was my retirement ceremony. Couldn't remember?"

"Oh, that's what it was."

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"This is Pete's show," Hagen said.

For the retirement ceremony at the Yellow Ramp on Pope Air Force Base, Pete sat up front with Geri and daughter Susan, facing a large U.S. flag.

Beforehand, he made the rounds, working the room like a seasoned politician. He clasped hands and hugged his old Army buddies and aging Special Forces brethren.

Theirs, Pete said later, is a special bond.

For the occasion, he wore a dark blue suit and red, white and blue flag tie.

This old paratrooper hobbled as he walked. His knees are bad. Bone on bone. But he doesn't blame the thousands of jumps for his difficulty in getting up in the morning. Instead, he attributes those faulty knees to years of running and "humping the rucksack."

Geri followed Pete around the room, clutching a purse on her right arm. "That's my honey bunny," he called her during an exchange with an old friend.

Leon Price, a former director of the Airborne and Special Operations Test Directorate, described them as a team. She has supported Pete all his life, Price said.

"He was very dedicated to his wife," he said. "He has taken the time to nurture her back to health. He has always been faithful and loyal to her."

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Every day, usually late afternoon or early evening, Pete and Geri will find a spot on the deck behind their home and say the rosary together. At night, they'll sit real close in the leather recliner that he bought four or five years ago.

Together, they watch TV.

Pete will continue to see his friends, going to the Special Forces Association Chapter meeting the second Saturday of each month. On Thursdays, it's unlikely that Pete will miss breakfast with the retired Special Forces guys at the Special Warfare Center.

"You never know if you'll see them again," he said. "Or, if they'll see me again."

He said he's blessed to be alive, and "blessed to be married to a beautiful and wonderful woman, and to have two wonderful children."

At this stage of Alzheimer's, Geri's able to do most everything for herself. Pete cooks the meals, and a woman comes in to clean the house every couple of weeks.

Geri hums incessantly, something Pete said she never did before the onset of dementia. She has an insatiable appetite for cookies and candy, and she usually drinks three or four 12-ounce cans of Country Time Lemonade a day.

"That's all I drink is lemonade," Geri said. "It's good."

Back home, her husband ribbed her that he's going back to work. He needs to put bread on the table, he said, laughing.

"No, you're not," she said. "You're home."

Once she has left the room, Pete said it's not the Alzheimer's that worries him the most. It's the thought of the cancer recurring. On Feb. 2, he's taking her back to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill for a re-evaluation.

"I will never put her in a nursing home. Not as long as she knows who I am," he said. "No, I will take care of my sweetheart."

All these years, Geri supported her husband over his long military and government careers. In 2000, she was there when Pete had surgery for prostate cancer. She was there to support him a few years ago, when he broke his leg on a jump.

Now, it's the old soldier's turn to stand by his wife.

"We have a good life," Geri said, her eyes glued on Pete. "Me and him and our two dogs."