Senior year, almost there!

Never had I felt so independent and sure of myself. The college treasurer complimented me on my good grades and arranged a loan for my tuition and whatever else I needed. I declined more than tuition, because I had been saving from the three jobs I had worked for a year. The state was paying me $50 each month to take two blind girls to their meals and read French and some other classes, a set number of hours each week. I was still saving some of my meal tickets to sell and had a dry cleaning business where I picked up in my dorm and delivered, keeping half the cash received.

A week before the end of the spring quarter I went to a dance with some other girls. It was one of the famous bands of the era and I didn't care if I danced. We always saw a few servicemen at the dances. You could tell, even if they were not in uniform, because they all wore the same G I shoes.. One asked me to dance and I had a rather nice time dancing with him all evening. I must have told him where I lived, and when I was going home for the week's break, because at the end of one very hard day on the tobacco farm I decided to check out a bay tree which had large blooms. It is related to magnolia and smells heavenly. I came in from the fields with an arm full to make a bouquet for the living room and to my surprise he was there in our yard.

This would have presented a problem except that I was not afraid to tell Daddy that we were going to a movie. He was down at the pier with some fishing buddies. We just marched down there and I introduced Phil Brown to him and said, "We are going to the show!" Just like that!

Mama told me the next day he was really hurt that I didn't ask his permission. I told her I would never ask his permission. I did not want another penny from him, and he did not need to control me. I shouldn't have been so sassy, but it felt good. Phil was really handsome, like Tom Cruz, with a great personality and that same smile. With a bit more hair he could have doubled.
He is probably bald now!! He played football for Cherry Point Marine Air Station. He had a friend who was dating Lois Johnson, my friend from church. Phil had a car, so they came up to college to see us a lot that summer.

In the fall I was student teaching. I was still doing the evening clinic at the infirmary, and reading to the blind girls at night. Phil was coming up about every Saturday, but one weekend he was supposed to have a game down in South Carolina. I had responded to a letter I received from Sugar Man, my old high school boyfriend who was desperate to see me. I told him he could come up on Sunday, but when Phil's game got canceled I completely forgot about it. We sat in the parlor all afternoon where he helped me with a cut-out project I was working on. When it was time to go to church we started walking to his car and who should we meet but my old friend. I greeted him and asked what he was doing so far from home, and when he said he had come to see me, I introduced him to Phil and invited him to go to church with us. It felt good to see him stood up in such a way. I told Phil I had not seen him in three years, since he fell for Christine! Later I heard he had been drafted and wanted to apologize to me before he entered the army. I also heard he got a ticket for speeding on his way home.

This is not the end of Sugar Man. There was another correspondence about the time I became engaged to be married. There was a picture of him in his uniform, and a plea for me to begin writing him because he was going to be discharged soon. What an ego this guy had!

My letter was very short. " I am engaged to be married to Ted J. Warner on June 19th. He is also a soldier, a paratrooper stationed at Ft. Bragg. Glad your hitch is over. Good luck!"