I was waltzing with my darling...

My father. I just love this picture, 'specially the yellow shirt and blue tie.. WTG Dad!

My father loved to dance. Not the organized kind of dancing, but his own rather delightful style. My father taught me to dance and in doing so, taught me to dance with anyone. If you could follow my dancing father, you could dance with the finest. His favorite song, as I've mentioned earlier, was "The Tennessee Waltz". Les Paul and Mary Ford... sigh....

My father's life was difficult. Although the stories of HOW seemed to change through the years, the fact that he had a broken back at a very young age remains intact. It was variously attributed to having tuberculosis, which his father had, and a fall, which my grandmother told us, probably because she didn't want to admit the T.B. He was in a body cast from the age of 2 until 8. Six years of changing this cast time and time again. His mother was a good, sweet woman, and apparently very patient. He had the classic T.B. spine, and the cast probably prevented him from being crippled any more than he was. My father was shorter than he should have been because of all this (and scoliosis, he had his spine fused in his teens). This wasn't the worst of all possible things (the short part), as my mother was just under 5 feet tall. They fit together. He thought that no one would ever be able to love him because of the condition of his back, but Mom could have cared less. She wrote this wonderful letter to her parents, not asking for permission to marry him, but telling them that she was going to drop out of school and marry him and that, as they say, was that! She was 18. They met at a dance held at her boarding school when she was 16 and he was 24. He decided right there and then that she was his "it" girl. My father could be very persuasive. Very...

and he loved to dance.....