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Our Story
Sunday March 22, 1969. Sunday School and morning Church services were over and Sunday dinner was in progress – a very big deal in our house. The Pastor was through preaching around noon, we were home by 12:15, Sunday dinner was on the table by 12:30, and the dishwasher was loaded by 2:00. That was always the regular Sunday routine at our house .
My parents had sold my little Sunbeam Alpine, the most wonderful car in the entire world, when I dropped out of college. I was relegated to buses, car pools, bumming rides and borrowing my mom's big old white Cadillac. All options came with varying degrees of humiliation – my punishment for dropping out of college! The lowest rung on the humiliation ladder was having one of my parents, almost always my mother, drive me anywhere.
On those occasions when I was allowed to borrow mom's car it always came with strings. As we were eating dinner I asked if I could borrow her car after dinner to use while she took her weekly Sunday afternoon nap which always took place between Sunday Dinner and going back to Coral Villa Baptist Church for Training Union and Sunday evening worship service.
Permission granted – strings were not to go far and have the car home by 6:00 so mom could drive it back to church at 6:15.
The Dishwasher was barely loaded when I was out the door to pick up my best friend, Paula Gibbs and the big white tank was headed to Coconut Grove to see and be seen at Hot Shoppes drive-in. I'm sure mom didn't have Coconut Grove in mind when she said not to go far – I had definitely driven into the “gray area” of obedience but I would have the car back on time.
As soon as we parked I spotted the cutest boy in a convertible in the car across the bay from us. He kept glancing at me – Bummer! He had a date in the front seat with him and another couple in the back seat. So why did he keep looking at me?
Then their car hop walked over to our car and handed me a note – he wanted my phone number. He had to be kidding! My “jerk alert radar” warning came on and I told the car hop to tell him I didn't give my phone number to boys who were out on dates with other girls!
The two girls got out of his car and walked over to; they explained that they were sisters and their mother and Bill's mother were old friends. They were here on vacation and their mothers had asked Bill to show them (the girls) around Miami so he invited his best friend to go too. It was not a date, he was doing a favor for his mother and her friend so to please give Bill my phone number – he really wanted it!
That shed a different light on things! I dug through my purse and so did Paula – neither of us had a pen but I did have a credit application I had filled out for a local clothing shop. It had my name, address, phone number, social security number, work history (which was very limited since I was only 19) – everything he could possibly need to get in touch with me.
By the time I got home he had called, introduced himself to my mom and they had a wonderful conversation. She already liked him and was comfortable with me going out with him.
After first dates you usually wonder if they will call again – and you wonder if you really want them to call again. And often you wonder how to avoid them if they do. This was very different. We both knew we would be a couple. There was no question, we would be together for a long time, if not forever and we both knew it immediately.
We laugh and say we actually fell in love with each other over a pepperoni pizza on our first date but I think cupid's arrow may have hit both of us before we were even out of the driveway. We just knew.
After we had been dating a while Bill asked me if I remember the Jay and the Americans concert. I told him I remembered it very well but it was in 1967. I had gone with one of my girlfriends. I reminded him that we did not meet until 1969.
He told me I had on a red sleeveless blouse and white slacks with my hair down in a flip on the ends. That was correct! I asked him how he knew that and he told me he had noticed me in the concert and tried to get to me but I got out of the auditorium too quickly; he couldn't catch up in the rush of people.
He said he never forgot what I looked like and he always watched around Miami hoping to find me. It was 2 years later at Hot Shoppes when he saw me again. I asked him if he recognized me right away and he said there was no doubt in his mind – I was the girl he saw 2 years earlier at the concert that he had been looking for. He said I stole his heart that night.
By the end of 1969 we were planning to be married. We even ran away to get married in Tennessee because we wouldn't need our parent's signatures like we would in Florida. We both had midnight curfews so Bill called his mother to tell her he would not be home. She told him she wanted us to be married but she did not want us to elope, she wanted us to have a real wedding. He was commanded to turn the car around and get home – and he did! We've talked
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