60!

A tale of two kids who overcame the odds on their way to an extraordinary life

On October 16, 1954, the story goes, there was a high school senior at University High School in West Los Angeles, a few miles southwest of UCLA, and at a party with some college kids that night, she saw a guy who was a sophomore from Stanford University. They had met a few months earlier, probably no more than a year.

The guy had come down from Palo Alto to see the football game between Stanford and the Bruins, a game that the home team won, no lie, 72-0.

Anyway, the guy and the gal hit it off, stayed in touch and made a date for New Year’s Eve.

As 1955 approached, the guy introduced the gal to his mother Sue. And Sue immediately loved her. This was the best gal the guy had ever brought home.

My dad took this news in, filtered through the complicated relationship he had as a teenager with his parents (who moved him from a happy life outside Chicago to an uncertain one in Los Angeles when he was 16). That night, at about 10 p.m., with the New Year still two hours away, the guy took the girl back to her house, said goodbye and left.

And they didn’t see each other again for seven years.