Just found an image from 30 years ago that we had forgotten. What a different world

[DFW]

My wife was visiting, presumably with me and our two (at the time) very young daughters, at my parents' house in Virginia. They had bought the land and built the house in 1954-55, borrowed every cent their relatives would lend them, cost about $50,000 at the time, which they definitely did NOT have. Only dirt roads, no pavement, and maybe three families in the whole area. I still remember that when it rained heavily, my dad couldn't get his car out of the driveway onto the street, as he kept slipping down the short incline. That didn't last long, and fifteen years later, the roads were all paved, and the wilderness became "Washington suburbs."

When she turned 40, my wife decided she didn't want to wear her hair at "hippie length" any more. The photo, from around 1992-1993, is unfortunately not very sharp, but her true nature still shines through. What this woman saw/sees in me is still a mystery to me, but I didn't compain 49 years ago when I met her, and I'm not complaining now.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. What a lucky find, my dear DFW!

Your wife is lovely now, as she was then, inside and out! Her true nature shows completely.

You are both very lucky within your marriage.

[DFW]

3. Yes, but some animals are luckier than others, as Orwell might have put it

She could have had any man she wanted. I most definitely could NOT have any woman I wanted. Why fate decided to grant my wish this one time, I have no idea, but when the Great Spirit decides, who am I to question?

[Lochloosa]

2. You definitely married up.

[DFW]

5. Ya think?

How'd you ever figure that out so quickly?

[Lochloosa]

8. I ve seen your pics.

[Niagara]

4. Lovely!

You know, FDW, you always say you have no idea what your lovely wife saw/sees in you.



You should ask her sometime. I'm guessing that she would say that your handsome, intelligent, witty and charismatic with some good natured humor thrown in there.

[DFW]

9. Oh. I'm scared I'll just find out what I suspected all along

She's nearsighted, and didn't realize what she was getting into until it was too late.

[Bluethroughu]

6. What a wonderful life.

The beauty transcends age and time.

[DFW]

13. We have a friend back in Dallas who knows her well

He is worth upwards of $70 million, but considers me the far richer man.

Like I said, he knows her well.

[Bluethroughu]

22. One can tell by the picture she lights up the room...

The glow is from the inside out.

[DFW]

37. Very perceptive observation

Especially from someone who has never met her. You are spot on.

[highplainsdem]

7. Your wife is beautiful, DFW, and she found just as beautiful a person with you.

It's no mystery that you've had all these happy years together, and that you've raised such amazing daughters.

[DFW]

10. Our daughters definitely got the right proportion of her DNA

They had guys chasing after them before they even knew what hormones were!

Our elder German graddaughter, all of five, already got a love letter from some six or seven year old schoolmate. Luckily it was in Russian, so she couldn't read it, and nor could her parents. I translated it for them, but made them promise not to translate it until she was older.

[SWBTATTReg]

11. Neat!

[Duncanpup]

12. So happy for you and family

[DFW]

14. She is why I never play the lottery

No way I'd ever win two jackpots

[GeoWilliam750]

15. Many wonderful congratulations Good Sir!

There are not many people who even have a chance at qualifying as the second luckiest person in the world!

Yet you came very close.

[DFW]

39. This is not horseshoes

Second luckiest in the world ain’t bad!

[FuzzyRabbit]

16. Man, did you luck out or what!

[DFW]

42. You got it right the first time

I lucked out.

Several times, in fact. She has survived cancer twice already, and the second time, it was a form so deadly, it is known as “the murderer” in the clinic where she was operated on. It is called The Murderer because it is always silent and never gives a hint it’s there until it’s too late. She was that one in ten thousand whose diagnosis was a chance finding, and it was discovered in its initial stages. They did 84 (!!!!) biopsies during the operation, and the surgeon was amazed when they ALL came back negative. He said he thought that this one time, he had gotten to it in time, and beaten The Murderer. That was seven years ago, so up to now, he was right.

[kooth]

17. Great Story!

I love stories like these! We've been married 33 years, so I understand what you are saying about your wife! Good luck and many happy, healthy years together!

[DFW]

43. Thanks!!

May you enjoy a similar voyage (minus the cancer!).

[orangecrush]

18. Beautiful

[NBachers]

19. You're as big a blessing for her as she is for you. She probably cherishes even your "sour" moments

Let's see some "Hippie length" pictures!

[DFW]

26. Well, for starters, there's this.

Last edited Wed Oct 18, 2023, 09:06 AM - Edit history (1)

I'll have to search for some others

OK, here you go:
1981 at Logan Airport in Boston


And late 1982, with her parents in Germany, already expecting our first daughter the next year:

I don't have a lot from her "hippie" days

[planetc]

20. What a tasteful person you are. Pehaps she is too.

[DFW]

44. Except for her questionable taste in men

I’d say hers surpasses mine by far.

I’d say the old phrase, “What’s a nice girl like her doing with a (fill in the blank) like him?” very much applies here.

[CousinIT]

21. She's beautiful. Joni Mitchell lookalike! N/t

[DFW]

46. I never saw Joni Mitchell in person

So I’m not an impartial judge (in my wife’s favor, of course!).

[debm55]

23. Great post. You two are very blessed to have each other.

[DFW]

36. Thanks! I think I got the upper hand in the blessings department

But as long as she’s happy, I won’t be rocking the boat.

Fortune smiled on me when we first met. When I first laid eyes on her, I was so dumbstruck, I couldn’t think of a line to use to try to impress her. She, for her part, was relieved to finally meet a guy who didn’t try to use a fancy line on her. Just lucky in my nerdiness.

[Prairie_Seagull]

24. Unless I miss my guess,

you are going to show her this thread and expect some additional, ahem dessert.

[DFW]

35. You missed your guess!

Like many women whose beauty radiates from within, she avoids any kind of public display at all. In her job as a social worker, the thing she most dreaded was having to do the rare press conference for the agency she worked for. When we flew to Washington to meet Bill Clinton for the first time—my dad was president of the Gridiron Club that year—, the local Düsseldorf paper ran a feature article about it, and made her very uncomfortable. When another local paper saw it, they called up and asked for an interview and a photo, she said, “no way!”

She’s funny that way. She’ll gladly slave all day in the kitchen (she is a gourmet chef, along with everything else), and make eight different dishes for thirty people whom she is thrilled to entertain that evening, but the second the attention starts to come from outside her comfort zone, she’s no longer cool with it.

[Deuxcents]

25. You are a rich man. May or may not be wealthy but definitely rich.

I love to hear about long relationships where the couple are still in love with each other. A great story to end my day as I wish you continued health and happiness

[DFW]

47. We met when we were 22.

We couldn’t even imagine life together at 30, much less having 40 year old children. To her, at the time, America seemed as far away as the dark side of the moon. She never imagined that she’d ever see it.

[617Blue]

27. You are both lucky!!

[marybourg]

28. $50,000 in 1954 in rural VA?

Either you got that wrong or it’s Maralago North. My parents bought a house in Queens, in NYC, in ‘54 for $15,000 and my first ( fairly large) house on Long Island in 1967 was $20,000.

[DFW]

30. That's what they said it cost for the land and the house

It was a large (-ish) lakeshore piece of land, and the house design was revolutionary for the time. Even today, “the round house on the lake” is still known to people who live in the area.

[marybourg]

31. Well, I guess if it were an architect-designed house

and they are very affluent people, it’s possible. But way off the charts for the middle-class. Anyway, lovely family.

[DFW]

33. It was an architect-designed house

Considered very daring for the day. As a matter of fact, I just heard from someone else on DU who guessed the lake right away because they grew up there, too, and they said their house was built in a similar time frame, and cost a similar amount, so it can’t have been quite as extravagant as you make it out be. As I mentioned, my parents could afford nothing of the sort at the time, but borrowed money from parents and anyone else willing to help them out. No way they could have managed the place on my dad’s reporter’s salary alone. But they loved their creation, and both died in it, almost five decades later.

[onenote]

34. DFW is not wrong. I grew up in that same neighborhood.

I recognized the lake immediately. In 1953, my parents bought a non-waterfront lot for around $5000 and had a custom-designed house built a new four bedroom house on the lot in 1955. All told they spent around $45,000. My dad was a staff lawyer for a government agency at the time, making less than $8,000 a year.

In short, DFW's recollection is spot on. These were large wooded lots, in a community with a swimmable, fishable lake with four sandy beaches, located less than a half hour (depending on traffic) from downtown DC.

[marybourg]

38. OK. Who would have thought close in NYC was 1/3 the cost of rural VA.

But those houses sound like way out of the range of anything familiar to my circle. What are they worth today?

[onenote]

41. Waterfront homes in the neighborhood go from $1.5 - $2.5 million.

Non-waterfronts, depending on whether they've been renovated and updated, go from $750,000 to $1.5 million.

[marybourg]

45. Interesting. My parents' house ( that they paid $15,000 for in '54)

is now going for about $1 million. Very middle class house. Not even an easy commute; requires a bus and subway. But my father, a garment worker, was able to afford it and afford to furnish it in the 1950’s.

[DFW]

49. Northern Virginia is so built up now, the commute is worse than in 1960

Traffic into DC is clogged in the morning, and it’s a battle even to get to one of the Metro stops (and find a parking space!).

I remember the wide open spaces and the farms spread along the two lane roads. That is all gone, now. Suburban sprawl, creeping ever farther south.

“Been away so long I hardly knew the place….”

[DFW]

52. When our mom died, and none of the children could afford to keep the house, we had to sell it.

The inheritance taxes, property taxes, and necessary repairs for a 50 year old house were just too much for me to manage, and my wife was dead set against trying to manage two houses, even if I could figure out the financing. It sold for about $1 million, as I recall. That is far less than it would be worth today, but that was over 20 years ago, and I'm sure that whoever bought it had to put some serious money into modernizing it. I have no knowledge whatsoever of the New York or Long Island situation, then or now, apparently far less than your insight into the northern Virginia situation of the time, so I have no basis for comparison.

[marybourg]

53. Clearly a very special and very expensive

house in 1954 and today.

[DFW]

54. It was special for its design.

The other poster who grew up there checked on its assessed value today, and found it to be $1.9 million, or the price of a modest house at best in the Boston area. Hardly the high end of the spectrum. I don't get the money obsession. For the area, at the time, it was average. Very few people at the time wanted to live THAT far out in the "wilderness."

As a Washington-based journalist, my father took on a burdensome commute in the beginning. My parents took on a fair amount of personal debt, too, but they managed it. They saw a prospectus, had their dream, went for it, surmounted the obstacles, and made it happen. Kudos to them. It got to be far more desirable when more families moved in and the roads finally got paved.

[Martin68]

29. I'm a Virginian. I'm curious to know where the photo was taken?

[DFW]

32. Down at the lake at my parents' house

It was on a man-made (ca. 1913) lake called lake Barcroft in Fairfax County, Virginia. It meant a punishing commute for my dad, especially in the early days, before the roads were paved, but they wanted to live there. His job was in Washington, mostly at 14th and F, but often also on Capitol Hill, the White House, and the Canadian Embassy. After the roads got paved, a lot of Congresscritters used to come out for the day. Senator Frank Church of Idaho was an especially frequent visitor, though I never really knew why. I just remember him because he was at the house so much.

[onenote]

40. A bunch of senior government folks lived there over the years

Ramsey Clark, Robert Finch, Bob Dole to name a few.

[DFW]

48. We didn't know Clark or Finch

But my dad knew Bob Dole well enough to be on a first name basis with him. Pierre Salinger, JFK’s press secretary, lived close by, and even got JFK to autograph a photo for me for my 11th birthday. Lucky me, as this was 1963.

[onenote]

50. Ramsey Clark's son was a high school classmate of mine.

They lived on the other side of the lake.

My older brother was in school with Salinger's son. And I'm friends with Dole's daughter.

Small world.

[DFW]

51. Wow, VERY small world!

I'm sure we must have run into lots of people that we should have known but didn't. As the senior reporter from the state of New York in DC, my dad knew practically EVERYBODY, and since his mom had been a longtime friend of HHH, she knew the whole "Minnesota Democratic Mafia," and thus, so did we. She had worked for Fiorello LaGuardia as his labor liason, but he fired her for being too friendly with labor, and not friendly enough with him! LaGuardia was a Republican, it should be noted, so the conflict was already pre-programmed. My dad's position also meant he was later invited to the July 4th party the Canadian Ambassador held for his DC friends every year on the roof of the Canadian Embassy downtown. Second best view of the fireworks except for the White House balcony. My dad was pointing out people right and left. "There goes the director of the FBI." Oh. OK. Just another guy in shorts with a hamburger and salad on his paper plate as far as I could tell. I heard one guy with a strong Dutch accent one time, and spoke to him in what was then my rudimentary Dutch. He was amazed to find an American who even recognized his accent, much less spoke some of the language. The guy he was talking to was lost with the Dutch, and said, hey can't we speak something I can understand? I said, sure, name it. He said how about Russian? He turned out to be an under-secretary of Defense for counter-imtelligence (or some such). I said I could hande Russian, but I didn't know about our Dutch friend (who turned out to be the Ambassador from the Netherlands). He said, Russian? No sweat. He had been their ambassador to Russia before he was posted to the USA.

There is a reason they call Washington, DC the biggest small town in the world.

My dad used to take us (his kids) up to the Senate Press Gallery in the Capitol in the late 50s and early 60s. At first, I couldn't figure out why all my friends were named Billy and Jimmy and all his friends were named "Senator." But I was hanging out with legends like Javits, Humphrey, Dirksen, LBJ, JFK, and a lot of etc. and had no earthly clue of the history that was happening in front of my eyes. I do still remember that Dirksen was entertaining as hell ("The Wizard of Ooze" ), and smoked like a chimney. Javits and Church came out to our house a lot, so I saw them more frequently. I just wish my political sophistication had been up to appreciating the conversation, but at age 8 or 10, it just went right by me.

In 6th grade, one of my recess playmates was, of all people, Bobby Kenndy, Jr. Just goes to show you that all the fame. money and privilege doesn't prevent you from becoming a nut case later on.