So I go out to see my folks today and I find them excited because today Is the 72nd anniversary of their first date. Heres the story: Theyre both from New York, its 1942 and my Mom is at Syracuse University and my Dad is in the Army. My Mom has a girlfriend at Syracuse who says her boyfriend is stationed at Dover-Foxcroft, Maine just outside Bangor and about 45 minutes from where Leah and I summer vacation every year. So her friend says My boyfriend, in the Army, has a troop-mate who thinks he may know you. His name is Austin Kalish. My Mom had a friend in grade school named Joyce Kalish, and she had an older brother and that might have been his name. So my Mom decides to write him as lots of people wrote to servicemen in WWII whether they knew them or not. So she wrote and it was Joyces brother and since my Mom was a journalism major, kept up the correspondence. It was towards the end of summer and Austin(aka Rocky) was going on leave in NYC and Irma was at home in NYC and a few weeks away from heading back to Syracuse for the fall semester. So they agreed to meet at Penn Station and go on their first date. Now Irma had brushed by Austin when she was 9 at her friend Joyces house and barely saw him then so she had no idea what he looked like. It was left to the instructions by my Dad that Ill be wearing my Army uniform. Now remember it was NYC, Penn Station and 1942... We were at war. My mother may have been the only one at Penn Station that day not wearing a uniform. So undeterred, she went from soldier to soldier saying Are you Austin Kalish? She recalls most of the service men said they were or would like to be... But eventually she came across the right one. They went to see My Sister, Eileen on Broadway and then on to ice cream somewhere. I didnt want to know anything else.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 22:32:28 +0000
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