John R Purcell

Guest Blog by Son-in-Law R.Murphy

John Purcell has deftly described how he met Janet, his wife and mother of their children, in an earlier blog. (And Janet quickly responded by writing what she insists is the real version.) So when John suggested I write about how I met his daughter, the love of my life, I wasn’t sure I should, for two reasons.

1. Surely my tale would suffer in comparison to his fine piece of writing.

2. I wasn’t sure he would be happy knowing what actually happened. It was his daughter, after all. We’ve been married happily now for forty years. Would he insist on an annulment if he knew the real story?

You, gentle reader, might understand if I’m a bit nervous about this. Still, he asked and I’ve never been able to refuse him. (And it has nothing to do with the fact that he grew up in Brooklyn as part of a large Italian “family” – it’s just because he’s such a nice guy. Honest.)

Anyhow, Joanne, my wife now (and who will hopefully remain so for some time to come), and I met on the campus of the University of Florida where we were both students. Now, UF has always had a reputation as a party school. But the years we were there, the late sixties, the school consistently ranked in Playboy Magazine’s top five party schools in the nation, even snagging the number one position more than once.

Most of the students were justly proud of this accomplishment and constantly sought to raise the ranking with ever more vigorous partying.

This led to a tendency to turn everything into a party. For example, meals, of any kind at any time, became a party occasion: breakfast, lunch, midafternoon snack after our naps, dinner, midnight snacks – all repasts became frolics.

On the particular Saturday I met my wife, Joanne, I was enjoying a beer-and-hoagie lunch party at my favorite sandwich shop. This was the follow-up to an early pancake-and-sausage breakfast party at the Wolfie’s on the corner of University and 13th. I was planning to attend a fraternity party that evening so the plan was to ingest a number of absorptive foods in preparation for the coming imbibery.

So there I was seated in my favorite booth at the sandwich shop with my roommate, Jerry. My roommate was the son of the Spanish Ambassador to the US. Jerry was well known on campus for his ability to party in at least two languages simultaneously. So accomplished a party-er was he that shortly before graduation his father was recalled from his post and Jerry and the entire family returned to Spain as part of the plea bargain agreement.

Anyhow, a friend of Jerry’s came in with his girlfriend, Diane. They joined us at the booth. I had never met Diane but she seemed to enjoy partying so she was a welcome addition. Only, as soon as she’d eaten a couple of subs and drunk five or six beers, she started talking about her own roommate – someone named Joanne. We were all slightly blurry but from what I could tell Diane was trying to find a date for Joanne.

Even through the haze, alarm bells began going off. Now, Diane was attractive and it’s a college truism that attractive girls room together but still… trying to get a date for her roommate on a Saturday afternoon?

“Why?” I asked. “Can’t she get a date on her own?”

Diane spluttered. “Of course she can, you dolt. But she’s stopped dating. On purpose. She says she’s swearing off men.”

“Why? I said again.

“Because so many of you are jerks. She’s tired of going on dates with guys that don’t know how to carry on a conversation. She’s tired of going to a party and having her date plant himself in front of the TV with the rest of the guys and ignoring her. She’s tired of all the stupid things men do that we’re all tired of. She’s just decided she doesn’t want anything more to do with it. That’s all. So I want to find her someone that she can go out with before this not-dating stuff turns into a habit. There are still a few good men, I just know it.”

I sensed her studying me.

“Oh.” I lowered my eyes and busied myself with trying to fold my paper napkin into a swan. It was so soggy, however, it turned into a sort of turkey dumpling.

I heard Diane speak. “So what do you say – will you go out with her tonight?”

I peeked up from my origami. To my relief I saw that she was asking not me, but Jerry, my roommate.

I said with honest enthusiasm, “Yeah, Jerry, you really should go out with her.”

But Jerry said, “Nahh. I already got a date tonight.”

My heart sank. And it plunged even further when Diane’s calculating gaze swung my way.

Before I could make the same excuse, Jerry said, “You go out with her. I know you don’t have a date for tonight yet.”

I shot Jerry a look that should have dropped him. He just smiled.

“Great,” Diane said. “It’s settled then.

“Ah, but…” I said.

She said, “I just need to call her so you can ask her.”

“Ask her?” I said. “Ask her what?”

Diane smiled sweetly. “Why, you need to ask her if she’ll go out with you tonight, silly boy. We don’t want her to think she’s been set up, now do we?”

The next thing I knew, I’m standing by the pay phone where it hung on the back wall of the sandwich shop. Diane was talking to Joanne.

“Hi, hon. I’ve got someone here who’d like to talk with you. I told him all about you… you know, how nice you are. So, he’s going to the Kappa Sig party tonight and he wanted me to call you so he could talk to you… No, I didn’t just meet him in a bar. He’s Jerry’s roommate… No, his father’s not Spanish nobility too. Actually I think he’s Irish… Well, I’ve heard him string two sentences together so he seems able to talk… Yes, he talked to me, not just to the other guys. Come on, you talk to him, Joanne. His name is Ron.”

Dianne thrust the black handset toward me. It looked as big as a dumbbell and felt about that heavy too. I was sweating suddenly. I didn’t want to be mean. It sounded like she’d had a tough time already. But somehow I had to convince her to not go out with me. Everybody knows: blind dates NEVER work out.

“Hello, this is Ron,” I said into the phone.

There was a brief pause and then the sweetest, softest, kindest voice you’ve ever heard said, “Hello, this is Joanne. It’s very nice to meet you, Ron.”

If I’d ever had a silver tongue, it suddenly turned to lead. I stammered something incoherent.

“What did you say?” she said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.”

I tried again. This time I sounded like a pig rooting in slop.

There was a long pause. I had a sudden vision of her at this moment imagining that this Ron must be a modern-day Hunchback of Notre Dame. She was visualizing being carried off to the bell tower by a troll. She said in what I thought was a much more cautious tone, “Ron, Diane said you wanted to talk to me. Why did you want to talk to me?”

I took a deep breath and found my voice again but now my brain stopped working. All I could think to say was to repeat her question “Why-did-I-want-to-talk-with-you??”

Diane punched me the ribs and through clenched teeth said, “Ask her!”

“Ow, ow,” I said, “Oh, that’s right, I wanted to ask you something.”

I didn’t hear Joanne saying anything. Diane had one fist balled up ready to strike me again.

The words rushed out. “Joanne, I wanted to ask you if you’d go out with me? Tonight? To the Kappa Sig house? To their party?”

There was that silence again. Just a moment before I’d been praying she’d say no, but now I found myself desperately wanting her to say yes. I had to see the person behind that voice. Meet her. Talk with her. Find out more about her. I don’t know how it happened, but I was already smitten.

I stood there holding my breath.

Finally, Joanne said, “Let me speak with Diane again, please.”

I gasped for air and frantically pushed the receiver back at Diane. “She wants to talk with you.”

“Hi, hon, whatcha need? No… Of course not. I swear on a stack of bibles. I did not put him up to this. It was his idea.” She laughed and seemed to be looking me over. “Oh, I’d say so. Yes, I might if I wasn’t already dating Alan. No, not might, I would, definitely… Oh, come on, you’ll have fun. You sure you won’t change your mind? Well, okay then.”

That didn’t sound good to me. Reluctantly I took back the phone.

“Hi,” I said.

“Ron, if Diane didn’t put you up to this and you sincerely want to go out tonight and it was your idea…”

“Oh, yeah, sure it was, of course.“ I fibbed but no way was I going to blow it now.

I heard her sigh. “Well, then, alright I guess. I’ll go out with you.”

“That’s great,” I said. “I can’t wait. I’ll pick you up at 8, okay?” After a moment discussing the details, we hung up.

My lunch party broke up not long after that. I spent the afternoon cleaning up and shaking off the lunch buzz. Something inside was telling me that tonight would not be just another Saturday night bash. I’d come back from Vietnam a few months earlier. Your senses get heightened in that environment; you learn to trust your intuition. Since I’d returned, I’d mostly been trying to put all that behind me, to forget the war, to drown it in diversions. Yet now, this Saturday afternoon, my sharpened senses began to return. I was on alert. Something was about to happen. I had a feeling it was something good this time.

Diane had given me Joanne’s address. The two of them roomed in the Towers, high-end, on-campus housing reserved for juniors and seniors.

I showed up early. Her door was the light honey color of newly-cut oak. It sounded hollow when I knocked on it. The sound echoed down the long hall of apartments.

After a moment, the latch clattered and the big door swung in.

Standing there in the open doorway was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. When she smiled and said hello, I had the most amazing sense that I already knew her.

“Ready?” I asked her.

She smiled and nodded and stepped toward me. “I am.”

I took her hand in mine as if it was the most natural thing in the world; as if we really had known each other before, as if we hadn’t just met that day.

I held on to her hand lightly as we made our way down to the car. I felt so natural and comfortable with her. We began talking about all sorts of things. It was like we were picking up the threads of old conversations.

At the party that night, we were in our own world. There were probably 200 or more revelers in the frat house and on the lawn outside - but we might as well have been alone on top of a mountain. We didn’t see the others, didn’t speak or interact with them. We spent most of that evening walking in the moonlight and talking, hand in hand.

When I left her that night, I asked if I could see her the next day. She agreed.

We went kite flying that Sunday afternoon.

Sunday evening, we held hands and talked some more.

It’s something we still do these forty years later…