Cherokee-Jane

I sat down near her and tried to figure out ways for a quick, shy guy like me to get to meet this girl and that was taken care of by itself. Some would call it fate or destiny but I don't believe in it, even if Jane does. We had a bus accident and I signed my name on a list the bus driver took in case the company had to call us as witnesses to the accident since it was clearly not the driver's fault. I signed after she did and memorized her name and address. And that is how I got to her later on a week later.

I sent her a greeting card for Valentines Day and asked her to call me if she was curious who her mysterious unknown admirer was which she did and we have been together ever since. - since 1957 - That is how it started. There is a lot more but why bore you with the details. The long and short of it is I did stalk her, I did show up when she least expected me, like on her dates, and eventually she asked me if I wanted to marry her. Honestly, if I knew then what I know now, I would have kept on walking. Life with her has changed my life and it has often been rough. We all make choices and some of us choose to live with them. To quit was not my style. I would be less than honest if I said I made the right choice. I don't know.

I also would be less than honest if I said I always like her anymore than I could say I like my kids. Them I like the least.

It hasn't always been easy. We have had; I think, more than our share of disappointments and problems but we decided to stick it out and we always resolved our problems and I suppose it has made us stronger for it. I don't regret it now. That would really be dumb; I am too old to show regrets. I don't wonder anymore what I might have missed. I don't think she does either.

I think it has been the best it could be and unless we won the lotto it isn't going to get any better unless we do, nor has it been so bad. I also probably wouldn't be living here. I'd be in Israel. I most definitely would not have had children. I'd have only dogs.

What I would have really liked to do is become an evolutionary biologist or particle physicist. But the state of scientific knowledge when I was in my teens and twenties was so deficient and my interest is with what we have learned about the universe and ourselves in the last couple of decades and what we will know soon. That is my great interest. I was probably born too soon.

Jane was an army brat and her father retired from the army after 33 years. He helped liberate the death camps during the war. Jane is Irish-Indian [Cherokee]. She was also Miss Eatontown of 1956.

Jane is good with guns too. She grew up around them and so did I from military school on. I bought her a Mauser [from WW2] 32 automatic from a friend when I was in the army and once when I was working 24 hours on and 48 hours off (at Camp Crystal), I came home early. This was when we lived in Virginia and I was working at the "alternate" White House at the time. That same day, a prisoner had escaped from the chain gang and tried to break into our house. I got off work early. When I walked into our bedroom at about three in the morning, there she was with that pistol cocked, ready to fire, and aimed at my head. That was a close one.

We did some hunting in those days and sometimes she went with me. And, later when I was doing real estate in Davie (FL), she had a 25 cal Baretta which saved her from being sexually assaulted. She was alone at the office, which was located in the country. This guy stopped at the office and when he saw she was there alone he said he was going to have his way with her. She stuck the gun in his face and asked if he was ready to meet his maker. He hightailed it out of there and never came back.

But the strangest thing happened when we went to Israel in 1970 and she forgot to take her gun out of her bag. She carried it everywhere and got through all that great Israeli security, and even the search at the Western Wall failed to find the gun. at the bottom of her purse.

When Jane was very young she stayed with her mother's relatives, the Spiveys, in Wilson, North Carolina - home of the largest bright-leaf tobacco market in the world. The Spiveys owned a farm and after school Jane would work in the fields and cropped tobacco and picked cotton and peanuts.

She also lived on an Indian reservation with her grandmother and remembers her grandmother's home with a dirt floor and an out house.

When she was six, she had an automobile accident and was hospitalized for several months with a broken collar bone, nose, arm and several ribs and a brain concussion. She has amnesia and they put a steel plate in her head. When she was 13, her family moved to New Jersey, because her father was stationed at Ft. Monmouth. That is where I met her (a few weeks away from being 17).