My family had just moved back to Topeka from Washington state in the fall of 1957.
For extra money through the holiday season I took a job at Pelletier's Department store. My first day there I met another girl who invited me to go with her to a sock hop at the Airman's Club at Forbes Air Base.
That night I met Fred, my soul mate, tall, dark, Lebanese and so handsome my insides melted, and for a little while I couldn't breathe.
Within a few months we were engaged. Our wedding was on June 21, 1958, in Utica, N.Y., where my husband's beautiful family put their arms around me and welcomed me into their lives.
Circumstances kept my own precious family from being able to go to New York and attend our wedding, the saddest part was not having my mother with me. The hardest part was being 17, shy and getting married to the most outgoing person I had ever met, whose family's first language was Arabic and whose customs were very different from the farm girl atmosphere I had grown up in.
After 42 years of marriage that has blessed us with five children and seven grandchildren, I still catch my breath and melt at his touch.
