It was a sweltering Wednesday afternoon in Miami on the 21st of July in 1971. Two years earlier on this day, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to step onto the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. This was one of the most significant events in human history, marking a milestone in space exploration.
At precisely the same time and just over a thousand miles north of the courthouse in Miami, President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman were meeting in the President’s office in the Old Executive Office Building. The building’s taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 264-001 of the White House Tapes.
But for me, this day was one of even greater significance, as it was the day I got married at the age of sixteen and became a wife to a Vietnam veteran and a stepmother to two toddlers whose mother had abandoned them while their father was trying to stay alive in the jungle.
We met downtown at the Dade County Courthouse on West Flagler Street at ten o’clock. Robert was working on the Eastern Airlines project at Miami International Airport and had told the foreman why he needed to take the rest of the day off. He was a union sheet metal worker and we needed the money, but this was important to both of us.
He spotted me right away and walked quickly over to give me a kiss on the cheek. We had an appointment with the Justice of the Peace at eleven, so we hurried inside and took the elevator up to the third floor.
“Bob, I think this is the same courtroom where I fought my ticket. Do you think it’ll be the same judge?”
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. I guessed it wouldn’t matter either way.
It was. I mean, it was the same judge who’d listened while I explained why I shouldn’t have to pay for a speeding ticket when everyone else on Biscayne Boulevard was passing me and honking because I was making them go slow. There had been a hint of a smile and then his decision. “Dismissed.” I didn’t say thank you because I thought it might be viewed as speaking out of turn and disrespectful.
Had it really been just two years since I sat in the auditorium at Edison Junior High and watched the moon landing with the other students? Now, it seemed like so very long ago.
I thought about Brett Shin, the cutest boy in the 9th grade who had told me he liked me. Then he went to New York City with his father and came back with the most beautiful tortoise shell comb as a gift for me. We were at lunch and his homeroom was called right after mine. I slipped to the back of my line and he hustled to the front of his and there we were.
It was awkward for several reasons. I liked him very much but couldn’t tell him that. I knew he liked me, or he wouldn’t have been so kind and attentive over the past month. And now the comb from New York City told me he did have a crush on me. He went on and on and I leaned in to make out his words over the din coming from the now more than two hundred kids pouring into the cafeteria for lunch and the noises coming from the kitchen. Someone must have dropped a heavy pan, because there was one moment of silence where I could hear Brett clearly before I couldn’t again.
“So there’s a cotillion on Saturday and I thought that if you weren’t busy we could go together. It would be a date and you could wear the comb in your hair. Do you want to go steady with me? Have you been to La Gorce?”
Yes, I had been to country clubs, but only when my mother was babysitting for a family and needed her for the day and into the evening. My memory of La Gorce Country Club was a good one. The people who had asked my mother to watch their two toddlers had made sure to include me in the activities they had for kids. I had played tennis and gone swimming and everyone was nice to me and to my mother that day.
“Yes, I’ve been to La Gorce. But I’d have to ask my mom about Saturday.”
No, I did not go on the date with Brett. I was way too self-conscious to put myself in that type of situation. When I told my mother about his invitation, I prefaced it with “I don’t want to go, but that boy, Brett, who likes me asked me out on a date with him…”
This Post is a Work in Progress!
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