After high school, Ed attended college for a semester before joining the Air Force. Later he served in Korea as a staff sergeant with the air rescue squadron. When his dad died, he left the military, returned home to help his mother, and resumed his college education. That’s when I met him.
It was 1956. As a high-school senior, I was on a work/study program, attending school half-day and working the other half. I wore a starched yellow uniform as the snack-bar girl at the Piggly Wiggly market in the San Fernando Valley. A cute box boy would smile at me as he pushed a customer’s shopping cart out the door and into the parking lot. His smile went all the way to my toes.
Although he was going bald, he was very handsome in his short-sleeve white shirt, blue bow tie, and yellow apron. He’d order three scoops of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup during his break every evening. I noticed his high school graduation ring with 1951 scored on it. He graduated from high school in 1951! That meant he graduated when I was eleven years old. I leaned into the refrigerator under the counter and counted on my fingers. He had to be twenty-three years old, and I was only sixteen. Yikes!
At the time, I thought my parents would never allow me to date someone that old. Yet, they did. When he came to the door on our first date, I wore a strawberry-colored, jersey two-piece outfit. I opened the door, and he said, “Wow!”
When we walked into the theater to see The King and I with Yule Brynner and Deborah Kerr, the song was Getting to Know You. How appropriate.
I fell in love quickly with my dream man. We were married in 1958 and enjoyed a 60-year marriage, raising our family together. He lived into his 80s, then Parkinson’s ravaged his body and mind.
On January 6th he celebrated his 90th birthday in heaven.