I was always very shy around girls. I could not get up the nerve to ask a girl for a date. An indication of that is it was my senior year in High School before I actually asked a girl out.

September 1948: By my last semester in high school I had far more credits that I needed for graduation. But I still needed to take some classes. They would not let me have all study halls. I took a psychology class because it was available. I was seated near two girls that I wanted to get to know better. I actually was talking to them and getting acquainted. Early in the first week a girl moved into the seat next to me. She had been sitting clear across the room. It was not long before every free talking time I had was with her. This was not my doing. She managed to get involved in every conversation and to think of questions to ask me. This did not promote my relationship with the other two girls. We did get to be pretty good friends during the course of the semester. I heard later that she was a shy retiring girl and her friends were amazed at her.  

On January 22, 1949, after four months I finally asked her for a date. We went on a triple date. I remember quite a bit about that date, for one thing I thought that I knew where she lived, but we got lost picking her up. And there were four of us in the back seat. Not a bad way to get further acquainted. We went to the movies, The Three Musketeers. This girl was, of course, Kathleen who has always fought to get what she wanted.

Five days later I graduated from High school. She met my parents at graduation. A week later I went on to Ohio State. Kathleen was a year behind me in High School.

My memory says that Kay wrote a 20-page letter to me everyday we were apart. I know that is an exaggeration, but maybe not much of one.

She went to Kent State following graduation. We both dated others in college, what is college without dating. But we dated every time I was able to get home. That would be about every 3 weeks. Maybe there were times she had to break a date to see me.

I remember one interesting date. I was driving a car that would, on occasion, act up. We decided to go to a park at night to see the flowers. I was leaving to go back to Columbus that night. My car would not start. Departure time was coming. I got to a telephone and called her father to pick us up so I could get to the bus on time. As far as I know he never asked what we were doing in the park after dark. Maybe he had some idea that we liked to look at the stars.

I graduated from Ohio State in June 1953. Kay went to the graduation with my parents and pinned on my 2^nd lieutenant bars.

In the summer of 1953 we went to D.C. for a weekend to pick up my brother's car. She stayed at the YWCA and I at the YMCA. We went there at night by train. I remember riding in the observation car with Kay beside me, talking, watching the lights, watching the people, holding hands. Of course the sightseeing in D.C. is always good. Kay says I just loved a certain dress that she had, blue, with a white collar. I asked her to wear it every day, and we had zillions of pictures of her in D.C. always in the same dress. But the going and coming is what I remember. It was really a great trip.

In April of 1955, I called Kathleen on the telephone to ask her to marry me. She said yes with enthusiasm. What did Dick do then? I took Shirley, a woman I had dated a year earlier, with me to help pick out the engagement and wedding rings. Then I mailed both rings to Kay. It was unusual to be engaged by phone and then to mail the wedding and engagement rings, but time was of the essence due to my teaching schedule.  The wedding had to be the weekend of July 16^th or else around Thanksgiving, after I got out of the army.  We decided to start our life together in a new state. Since at that time Kay did not drive, after work her father went to the post office and picked up the rings and he placed the engagement ring on her finger for me.  

I drove home on July 14^th. On July 15^th Kay and I went to get our wedding license.  She had told me the cost was $2.00 and I handed the money to the clerk. It turned out the cost was $2.20 cents and I insisted that Kay pay the 20 cent difference! At this point she should have realized how hard her life was going to be.

Very late that night my mother came into my bedroom and said, "The apartment is on fire. You can get up if you want to", and then left the apartment. I was groggy, got up and looked out of the second floor window. Dozens of people there, fire engines, the works. I opened the back door, and the hall was filled with smoke. I went to the front door, and that hall was filled with smoke. I could hardly see in either hallway. I dressed went own the stairs through the smoke out into the crowd and asked my mother why she didn't get me up. She said that she knew it was a small fire. Unknown to us the fire burned out the telephone wires so we had no telephone service.

The reception was at the church followed by a buffet at her parent’s house. During and after the buffet, with help, we packed everything we owned into our car just leaving enough space for us to get in. We headed to Oklahoma around 8 PM. We had made no reservations for the night as we had no idea when we would get away.  Besides, Richard said finding a place would be no trouble.  We only stopped at about 6 places before we found a small motel in Lafayette, Ohio maybe 25 miles from Akron. The next night we spent in St. Louis, MO and the following night at our new duplex in Lawton, OK that I had rented a few weeks before . We could not delay our driving to Oklahoma as I was teaching an eight week class at the Artillery School.    

Kay got enough driving experience on the 1,200 mile trip so that she passed her Oklahoma driving test with flying colors.

There are so many memories from those days. So many memories from the days after, but that is 513 more stories.