NUMBER SIXTY-SIX

Dear George, 

Today is Katja’s and my sixty-sixth wedding anniversary. Hard to believe. That’s 75% of our lives on earth. We were married in the Quaker chapel on the Antioch College campus in Yellow Springs, Ohio, on this date in 1960. The ceremony was performed by the campus minister, Howard Johnson. Katja’s parents drove with her siblings, Ami and David, from Philadelphia, and my parents drove with Steven, Peter, and Vicki from Menominee. Katja’s parents disapproved of our pending wedding, in part because I was such a quiet person. Nonetheless, it went off without a hitch. We served the 27 guests with tiny cups from a single bottle of champagne, then headed off for a one-night honeymoon in downtown Dayton. 

A week later we set off for graduate school in Ann Arbor, Katja in Romance Languages and me in Social Psychology. We bought a darling German Shepherd puppy who we named Heather and who died in a tragic accident later in the year. Katja worked as a sales clerk at Faber’s Fabrics on Main Street in Ann Arbor throughout our stay. A two-month trip to Europe was one of the highlights of our Ann Arbor years. We did a camping road trip from Michigan to Seattle and San Francisco and back. We also spent two summers at the National Training Laboratories in Bethel, Maine, doing research on identity change in human relations training groups. 

Katja’ finished her M.A. degree, and we moved to Cincinnati in 1966 where I’d taken a faculty job at the University of Cincinnati. In 1969 Katja gave birth to our son, Justin, the most momentous event in our entire marriage. We were devoted parents, and Justin was the center of our lives. At age 8 or 9 he and I started playing tennis, and soon he was participating in local junior tournaments. Katja and I were insane tennis parents. Throughout these years we travelled to Menominee, Philadelphia, and New York Gity where Katja’s sister lived, as well as vacations places like Savannah, Charleston, Amelia Island, and Cape Cod. 

Anticipating college expenses, Katja returned to graduate school to get a Master’s in Social Work degree, then took a job as a social worker at the Cincinnati Association for the Blind. One of her clients said, “I never knew that being blind could be so much fun.” Justin was admitted to Columbia University in New York City, and his departure was overwhelming to his parents. Our work years seemed to whiz by. Justin graduated, went off to med school in New Orleans with his partner, Kiersta, and the two doctors eventually married and adopted Alex and Leo, our grandchildren. 

I retired in 2009, having served as Acting Head of the Sociology Department at UC, and Katja retired in 2011. We started taking classes togetheer at the university’s OLLI program for seniors a couple of years later, and we’re still at it. It’s much like college, so it’s like we’ve gone back to where we began. These are happy married years. We’re glad to still be around at this advanced age, feel healthy and secure, and grateful that we’ve been married for 66 years. 

Love, 

Dave