Fifty Years Ago Today, She Took My Breath Away

February 22, 2024 (Vol. 18 No. 11) - Fifty years ago on this very day, my world changed forever. It was already guaranteed to be a memorable day. Late on a rainy Friday afternoon, I rounded a curve on U.S. 60 in my blue VW bug and entered the sleepy - and on this day, dreary - little town of Hawesville, Kentucky. I had taken a job sight-unseen as an announcer and ad salesman for daytime country music radio station WKCM-AM. It was my first job out of college. The country was in the middle of a recession and it was the first job I could find after several months of looking. At the end of a grueling two-day drive from College Park, Maryland, I drove up to the station, located in a small white-frame house just a stone's throw from the Ohio River and met my boss and co-workers for the first time. After brief introductions, the group went down to a small restaurant near the Ohio River bridge that takes you into Indiana. The name of the restaurant - which no longer exists - was the Captain's Table. It was much like downtown Hawesville itself, unpretentious and tiny. Over a dinner of ribeyes and baked potatoes, the trajectory of my life changed. A pretty young waitress with light brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses wearing a white dress and blue stockings walked into my life, took my dinner order and, eventually, captured my heart. She was a high school senior named Jan Marie Fillman. I was only 21. She was 17. Yet I knew right away that Jan was someone special. She literally took my breath away. Little did either of us know that 18 months and one day later we would become husband and wife. That encounter 50 years ago today launched us on a 33-year adventure punctuated by the birth of our daughter Susan in December 1983. Marriage to Jan also brought with it the added bonus of becoming a part of the extended Fillman family - something I consider a blessing. The picture I have chosen to accompany this blog entry was taken on what was, other than the day our daughter was born, my favorite day of our nearly 32-year marriage. Jan and I were dining at a street cafe along the Champs-Elysées in Paris on May 1, 2004. We spent four days in The City of Light at the end of a four-month teaching assignment in Italy. The French capitol was beautiful, the weather was perfect and our time together was golden. I had no way of knowing that my loving wife would be gone in less than three years from a cerebral hemorrhage. That's why I hold memories of that May Day, our life together and that magical encounter a half-century ago today so dear. Emily Dickinson wrote "unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality." There is also a Vietnamese proverb that is fitting on this very special anniversary: "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." That's it for now. Fear the Turtle.