October 18th … 44 years ago!

While this is a very personal story, I hope you’ll take a couple of minutes to read … as I think you’ll find a few interesting tidbits.

On a very rainy Saturday in 1975 in Trenton, New Jersey, I finally was marrying the lady that I had already loved for nearly 18 years … since I first laid eyes on her on December 2^nd, 1957.

Yes, this would have been our 44^th wedding anniversary, except — as you likely know — she was taken to her heavenly home this past February. In between, though, we were privileged to have many great experiences … some of which I’ll share with you in a moment. But first, here’s a poetic message — which I just discovered yesterday in my sorting and sifting — which she wrote and sent sometime after we had re-met following the 17-year absence and when we married:

You are my dearest sweetheart
so gentle and so loving;
Your touch to me is heaven,
so exciting and so moving;
Your eyes say all the things you feel
down so deep in your heart,
And your mouth expresses love that’s real,
when we kiss after being apart.
Your arms hold me so very tight
I find it difficult breathing;
Your body’s fire is ah so warm
that when it’s time for leaving,
I find it very hard to accept
without a little grieving.
My heart weeps but a moment though,
for I realize full well,
You will return to me again
for how long no one can tell?
But those precious moments what e’r they be
mean everything to me …
For you are my dearest sweetheart
both now and for eternity.

Love, Alicia

Our first notable trips together would be to Hawaii to take part in Bonneville International Corporation’s annual managers’ gatherings, first in 1976 and again in 1978, where this photo was taken during an evening dress-up dinner. It was company policy that spouses be included in all of these meetings … even if they were held in such “hazardous duty” locations.

Meanwhile, my Bonneville Broadcast Consultants entity had signed a programming and consultancy client in Perth, Australia, who in early 1979 was asking that I make a return visit to their radio station, 6KY … and provided an around-the-world first class plane ticket to cover my travel expenses. It just so happened that a few short weeks later, we would be due in Hawaii for another one of those command-performance Bonneville manager gatherings. I was able to assemble this into one five-week trip which included — after a week in Perth — stops in Adelaide and Sydney, Australia, along with a week’s tour of New Zealand before arriving in Hawaii.

In those days, it cost only $100.00 per ticket more than first-class to take the Concorde from New York to London, cutting normal seven-hour flying time in half — which we thought would be an interesting experience. Only problem was that on our scheduled day, a quirky group of issues developed that caused our flight to be seven hours late in departing! Fortunately, we had a few days in London before boarding a Qantas flight for the 17-hour trip to Perth.

While in Perth, during a walk through the downtown marketplace on a Saturday afternoon, Alicia became entranced by a melody that we heard coming from a record shop, a tune that I had not yet heard either. It turned out the song was the Elton John instrumental, “Song For Guy,” dedicated to a young man who worked at Elton’s record company and died in a tragic motorcycle accident. As soon as we returned to New Jersey, it became a staple in my music programming and continued to be well into my satellite radio days.

Come the 1980’s, not only did she present her recital in New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall, she recorded an album of classical compositions and joined a large choir which toured the British Isles presenting concerts in several of the large, historic cathedrals.

Then, an event which Alicia considered one of the highlights of her singing career was the honor of being chosen to be soprano soloist in a northern New Jersey performance of Dave and Iola Brubeck’s Christmas choral work, La Fiesta de la Posada, in which the great jazz pianist and his trio took part along with a full orchestra and chorus.

As the record companies had ceased releasing recordings of musical arrangements we needed for our radio programming service, during the 1980’s I made several trips to London for recording sessions with John Fox and Nick Ingman and their orchestras, and John and Joy Fox made a couple of trips to the U. S. and stayed with us in our Tenafly, New Jersey home.

Before the end of the decade, we’d travel to a recording studio in Smyrna, George, twice for Alicia to record two different albums … providing material which would serve us well, as over the next five years many weekends found us on the road as she sung concerts in churches and retirement communities. And, she drug me into a photo studio to have a series of portrait photos taken.

After having been out of the radio industry for several years, I yearned for one more opportunity to create programming that would once again bring joy to those listening. This came in December 2000 when I was invited to join the start-up programming team being assembled at XM Satellite Radio. In 1987 we had moved back to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up (Alicia was from across the Delaware River in Bordentown and Trenton, New Jersey) … and now it was time to move again, this time to the greater Washington, D. C., area where XM was headquartered.

In 2005, seeing an ad for this little gem of a car in this bright yellow paint, Alicia just had to have one. It had to be ordered, as they were custom-built in England. A month later, it was hers the day after it came off the boat in Baltimore! I still have it, not sure if I want to let it go. While 14 years old, it’s like new with only 39,000 miles, as it’s been primarily driven locally.

While we’ve been up and down the eastern coast of the United States many times over the years, out last major trip began in Denver with my participating in the National Railway Historical Society annual convention in 2016, then driving on to southern Utah — where my cousin Connie and her husband Jean showed us the top of the world from a Utah perspective — and continuing west to the Pacific Ocean and up the California coast. Our last notable trip while Alicia was still up to traveling took us to Clarinda, Iowa, in June of 2018 for a second Glenn Miller Festival experience (which I’ve previously written about on this page).

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And, during one of our trips north a few years ago, we stopped in Hyde Park, New York, to visit the folks who occupied the White House during our childhood years, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Does your life story possibly include such a moment? Mine occurred on an evening nearly 62 years ago. I had taken my Philco tape recorder and one of my RCA Model 74 microphones to the Trinity Cathedral in Trenton, where the Trenton Community Chorus was rehearsing choral portions of Handel’s Messiah, as I was producing a radio special telling about his writing of the great work. As they rehearsed, among this group of more than 100 individuals, all I could see was one face, a red-headed gal in the middle of the crowd. End of story and the beginning of a journey!

During our married years, my pet name for her would change from time to time — during the Downton Abbey TV series craze a few years ago, it became “Lady Alicia” … for which this photo taken in our London hotel room in 1979 seems so fitting.

Thank you for taking the time to read our personal story.

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Next week in this space, we’ll share some of the news from late October and early November as occurred during the World War Two years. Then, these Musings postings will transition to an every-other-week schedule, as 1) many of these stories take longer to research and write than I anticipate and 2) with the changes that have occurred in my life, I’m finding time-wise I’m being pulled in new and different directions.