Half a century of wedded bliss

Holy “For better or worse,” Batman! My wife and I just celebrated 50 years of wedded bliss. Who would’ve “thunk” it possible? I know some of my Holyoke High School friends are amazed. They remember me as some goofy kid who asserted many times, “I am not going to get married.” (Also, they probably surmised that I would never find a woman who would WANT to marry me. Kids can be cruel at times.)

I do admit that I “explored the field” in college and early in my Air Force career. And there were a couple of women with whom I thought it might be OK to live with — at least for some period. I didn’t mind playing the field, but it was so tedious at times! I finally decided that a lasting relationship with one woman might be more prudent.

My dad, Kayle, and I even made a wager — I bet him $100 I wouldn’t get married until I was at least 40 years old; he gladly accepted. In fact, I wrote out a “contract” regarding this wager and then cut it in half — jagged edges for the contract to link together. My dad kept his half of the “contract” and I kept my half. I just knew I could get a hundred bucks from my father, since there were no female prospects in my life and I didn’t really think getting married was the right choice for me. Uh huh.

Alas, things did not work out as I planned (thankfully). A few ladies in college made it clear that marrying me was not in their long-range plans. At my first two Air Force locations, I dated, but no one strummed my heart strings. At my third assignment, however, things changed. While stationed at Travis AFB, in northern California, I was introduced to miss Judy Frohning, one of 10 siblings who hailed originally from Newton — a town slightly larger than Holyoke in the farming area of eastern Illinois. Perhaps it was an omen, but Judy and I discovered we had identical high school rings — probably because the Jostens ring company went to all the high schools across the nation. The rings had the same design, but she was a Newton Eagle and I was a Holyoke Dragon! She graduated in 1962 and I graduated in 1964, however.

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