Love that won't fade away

Girl of his dreams gets second chance

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

-- W. Somerset Maugham

First love, first infatuation, the first kiss: 1943 was a good year to be in love. The world was at war, and death loomed for the young just as they were reaching out for life, giving every emotion a heightened sense of urgency.

World War II was transforming America in other ways, too. In many cities across the United States, army bases and supporting industry were springing up seemingly overnight, bringing people together who in the past would never had met. Such were the circumstances that brought together a 24-year-old soldier named Hugh from a tiny town in Georgia called Apalachee and Edna, a 22-year-old bright-eyed beauty from St. Petersburg, Fla.

A fifth generation Floridian, Edna grew up with a robust, hard-drinking storyteller for a father and a flinty no-nonsense mother who valued family above all else. She shared her father's bawdy sense of humor and wit along with her mother's steely determination and beauty. Men not surprisingly found her irresistible. Edna was determined not to live her mother's life as a housewife. She wanted significance. For her, that meant having money. So, all high school suitors were rejected, older men that came courting rejected, Edna instead went to work, finding a job at the bustling MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. That resolve would be tested when she met Hugh.

A handsome young officer with charm, grace, and above all, confidence, Hugh had met President Roosevelt when delivering a new car to him at the Warm Springs clinic in 1938. He worked as an insurance salesman until joining the army in 1942. Edna made him laugh; she made him weep; she made him forget himself.

Hugh in short order took Edna up to meet his parents at their grand home in Apalachee. She would forever remember that visit as ripped from the pages of a gothic southern romance complete with gowns, servants and mint julips on the veranda. He asked her to marry him that visit, and she said yes.

Hugh found himself shipping out to Italy in 1944, and soon Edna's pragmatism took hold. Another soldier, who was a hospital administrator there at St. Pete, began courting her in earnest. A relative of her uncle's wife, he had the family seal of approval. He was going places in the Veterans Bureau. She said "yes" for a second time, sending Hugh a letter but giving no reason why. Maybe she didn't know herself.

At the wedding, Hugh, having returned from Italy, stood at the back door. Edna burst into tears when she caught sight of him as she entered the church on her father's arm. Her father leaned close and said, "Which way are we going?" Wiping her tears, she calmly replied, "Straight ahead."

Fast forward to 2013. At age 93, Edna's health is starting to fail. Her niece, on a whim to cheer her up, sees if she can contact her first love, that handsome airman from Georgia. To her surprise, she quickly finds Hugh's daughter to whom her dad had often told the tale of the Florida beauty who had stolen his heart as a young man. At 95 and confined to a wheelchair, Hugh has trouble with the present, but his memory burns bright about Edna. The niece arranges a phone call and later that week, the former lovers speak for the first time in 68 years.

After the call, Edna's niece asked how it went. "He asked me several times to come see him in Georgia," she responded. "Will you go? I will take you!" said the niece excitedly. "No," Edna replied. "I told him no," closing that door on that part of her life one last time. Hugh died six months later. Edna would follow in two years, never regretting her decision.

Joseph Campbell has written that what we seek as humans is an experience of being alive. Many of us settle instead for safety. I like to think that in the chalice where her memory sings, my aunt never forgot her first love and feeling the rapture of being alive that special night long ago in Apalachee.

NAN Our Town on 06/21/2018

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