Me and Dad

Yesterday I drove Jessica to the airport and I was telling her the same old stories of me and dad.  And I thought, do you all know these stories?  They are so simple and corny but they were the start of a long-lasting relationship!

As you know, I knew who dad was for a few years.  I lived in White Plains and he lived in Poughkeepsie.  Karen Merrill was our mutual friend.  So on a Friday night in the beginning of March 1979, Karen wanted to go to the Washington, DC temple and said I needed to go.  She had arranged for Bill (your father) to drive and she had planned to sit in the back seat with Doug, a cadet from West Point.  Then when she realized I was hesitating; she laid on the guilt trip and declared that IF I didn't go....Doug would sit in the front seat with Bill, and she would have to be in the backseat by herself.  What a good friend I was.  I went.  Did I ever mention that Bill was "engaged" or so the rumor was to another girl? 

Well to make a long story short, we hit it off!  We talked the 5 hours to DC and listened to Beatle's Love Songs on 8-track!!  When we got back to White Plains on Sunday night, I invited Bill into our home to meet my parents.  I made him a sandwich for the ride back to Poughkeepsie and backed it into a brown paper sack with a napkin.  I never knew a napkin was so important.  To this day Bill still reminds me of that silly napkin. I guess it sealed the deal.

So in the days before cell phones, we arranged for Bill to call me on Wednesday night about 5:30 p.m. when I got home from work.  He couldn't call on Monday because I worked for a bank president and Monday was our late night.  Tuesday night he had to go home teaching.  So Wednesday it was.

I was in my room waiting for the phone call on Wednesday and at exactly 5:30 p.m. the phone rang.  When I asked Bill what he was doing, he said he was waiting for it to be 5:30 so he could call me!!

The following Saturday he came to White Plains again.  What I remember from that day is that we were walking in White Plains and he started to run down the sidewalk and hurdled a trash can!  There was never a dull moment with Bill.  He always made me laugh.  My grandmother, Marguerite, always told me "it's just as easy to marry a rich man as it is a poor man."  But rich or not, I knew life with Bill was going to be fun!