(Excerpted from my book, The Long Pivot Home: Based on a true story of love and loss in Oklahoma.)

For five years, from 1995-2000, I had been trying to complete a giant pivot in my life, charting a new course away from the loss of my beloved wife Selena, then away from my experience in the Oklahoma City bombing, then my resulting double life as a professor in the classrooms and a compulsive gambler in the casinos.

That effort was a very long process and often was characterized by one step forward and two back; sometimes more.

Lessons Learned

I had learned a few things over these years, chief among them that hammering my thumb by moving into a destructive addiction and moving too quickly into the wrong relationships, had not worked to erase my pain. Indeed, it had only led to more of it.

I also came to grips with being a flawed individual. But I was working hard to be a better man, and that became my daily objective. I was making strides toward that goal, and Kate Hammond’s entrance into my life helped immensely. I now had even stronger reasons to leave Selena and the Tunica, Mississippi casinos behind permanently. I was tired of lying about myself to people I cared about, and I knew I would have to put more geographical distance between me and the gambling houses just south of the Memphis line.

Today, as I write this, I have not entered a casino in many years.

Love wins out

As for my experiences with love … well … the fact I’d lost Selena was the reason I was seeking escape in these casinos in the first place. I had lost in my pursuit of an unattainable and lasting love, even though so many of these experiences with Selena had – in  our earlier years together – strongly hinted the story would go on forever.

Although the reason for my losing Selena was different from subsequent failed relationships, the end result was always the same: This guy who was meant to live life with a soul mate, was left standing alone when the music stopped

Until Kate came into my life on New Year’s Eve 1999. She was living in Kentucky, and she reached out to me online that night via a dating site.

It was during one of Kate’s subsequent visits to Memphis in the spring of 2000 that I received an offer from the University of Oklahoma to become their McMahon Centennial Professor, starting in the following fall term. I readily accepted, partly because the inference that I would be a strong candidate for the dean’s position which was opening in the school of journalism that year. Kate was excited for me, and we knew we would work out the logistics for us. We both knew by then that, where ever either of us was headed, we would definitely be going there together.

Kate and I saw each other regularly, and she would spend many of those nights with me at my apartment. On one of those nights, I asked her to marry me, she said yes, and we set the date for July 16. I felt my grip on life had strengthened enough to make that move, knowing I wanted to be able to stand on my own two feet before asking her to spend her life with me.

Regaining control

So, for the first time in a long time, I felt I was regaining control of my life. Early on in our relationship, I had told Kate of my gambling problem, and she must have thought I was worth the risk, which is something for which I am eternally grateful.

We married in Kentucky as planned, amid her family members, most of whom were skeptical and felt we had moved too fast. I later learned that some of them had considered staging an intervention with Kate to talk her out of getting married so soon. But they all put on their best smiles at the wedding and hoped for the best.

It was a happy occasion for us, but I’m not sure how many family members were excited about it. It’s felt good trying to relieve them of their doubts over all these intervening years. Kate and I have both come to experience a love like we had never known before. It took a while for it develop to the even-deeper state that it would in years to come, but that’s the best kind of love, no?

Back to Oklahoma

The wedding was held on the evening of July 16 in a small Episcopal Church, and a couple weeks later Kate and I were packing up to move to Norman, Oklahoma, for my new job at OU.

It was a new experience for her is every way possible: she had never lived outside of  Kentucky, in all her 47 years; she had only been to Oklahoma once, to meet my parents; she was leaving her three grown daughters behind in Louisville, and she was doing all this with a brand new husband who she knew was bringing some heavy baggage into the marriage. She knew I was still shell-shocked from the experience with Selena,  and she knew that I had resorted to gambling in a way an alcoholic tries to drown his sorrow in booze.

Kate’s bravery

All in all, it took an extremely brave and confident woman to do that, and those are two of Kate’s shining traits. It was an undeserved stroke of good fortune for me that she did it out of genuine love for me.

Kate helped me leave gambling behind and forge ahead in my profession and personal life. The OU experience lasted only one year, but it was a memorable one for both of us. It was good being only a half-hour away from my parents and sister, and Kate got to know both of them well by the time the year was over.

She also was able to broaden her career resume’ by working as a musical accompanist for the OU School of Dance where she had to play a variety of impromptu pieces to fit the kinds of dances the instructor would be teaching each day. Kate has often told me it was the most stressful job she has ever had.

Old boat, new waters

When I took the OU job, I was excited and had idealistic visions of returning to the school I had loved as a student there. But a couple months after arriving, I learned the wisdom of the saying by the poet Heraclitus: “No man steps twice into the same river, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.” The University of Oklahoma was a different river by this year of 2000-2001, and I missed the old river that I had known in the mid-1960s as a student.

As for Kate, she was hoping for a less stressful job than the juggling act she was called on to perform every day in the school of dance. Add to all this the Oklahoma weather, which was extreme this year, going from ice storms in the winter to 104-degree temperatures and tornadoes in the spring and summer, and we were ready to seek greener pastures for 2001-2002.

Back to Memphis

I was asked to return to the University of Memphis, and I said yes. Sealing the deal for Kate and me was the fact we spent one of our last nights in Norman dodging a tornado.

We returned to Memphis for what would be a two-year stint which began with my being credited with a new student- and faculty-exchange program with two German universities that grew out of my partnership with ZDF television. Kate and I were invited to Frankfurt for the ribbon-cutting of the program that was overseen by newly appointed U.S. Ambassador Dan Coates.

Two decades later, that program is still going strong, and I was invited back to Germany in 2023 to help commemorate its founding. It is the only German-American journalism school exchange program like it, and I am proud of my contribution to getting it started.

I still felt vulnerable in Memphis, living so close to alluring casinos, so I began searching for other universities and found one in Southern California.

On to California

I got the job as chair of the Department of Communication Studies, and we entered into the West Coast phase of our life and marriage.

It felt good to be finally offering some tangible help to Kate in her unfolding career by securing free tuition for her at the university. Using that benefit, she completed two masters degrees and expand her interests beyond music into college student affairs management and teaching English to international students. This latter TESOL Master’s degree gave Kate entry to teach internationals at the university level for several years.

Along the way, we served as homestay parents for the international students she taught. At one point in our four-bedroom home, we were housing four different international students from three different countries. A real United Nations, and it was a lot of fun.

A new life

Nearly a quarter-center later, with Kate right beside me all the way, I know she is that person. I am indeed happy and have found my peace and my love. I have rebuilt my life and finances, made good friends, and Kate and I share a beautiful a home that’s filled with a half-dozen loving animals.

What more could a guy ask for?

As I write this, all these years later, I know I did have enough resolve left inside to fight my demons and move forward with hope. And I managed to salvage and build a life of value out of the trail of faux diamonds and rusted memories of Selena’s passing.  I had moved on to some 17 years of service at a values-centered university in Southern California, and I will soon celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary to a woman who I love madly.

I have recovered from my financial losses and have taken my credit score from that dismal 387 to a perfect 850. The man who once had to visit payday loan storefronts in strip malls, now gets a half-dozen invitations a week from large financial houses to borrow money. I pride myself in turning them all down.

The pivot point remembered

I will always look back to the Oklahoma City bombing as the pivot point in my life. In my darkest days of losing Selena, I encountered a much darker day thrust upon the people I grew up among, my fellow Sooners. It was an undeserved and cruel act that turned a vibrant city into a city of mourners. And it was an undeserved privilege for me to be able to tell their story of heroism and resilience in responding to that bombing.

In articulating their pain and the way they dealt with it, I was also articulating my own pain. I hoped I could match the resilience and pluck that my Oklahoma friends exhibited. It became my challenge and gave me enough inspiration to deal with the fight still to come in my own life.

I continue to grieve for the victims of the Murrah Building bombing, and I realize that as I write this in 2024, the youngest of the 219 children whose parents perished in that blast have now neared or reached the age of 30. Those who went — or are going — to college could do so for free in-state tuition, thanks to a multi-million-dollar donation fund set up in a foundation for that purpose.

More than enough

As for me, I count the patience, love, and support my wife has given me to be among my greatest gifts in life. As is the case with many journalists, I experienced some ongoing trauma from being so close to the bombing. But my career as a writer and educator has given me the creative and linguistic abilities to imagine and express my feelings. As a professor and writing coach, I’ve been able to pass some of my knowledge along to many young writers.

I’ll wrap it all up with a line from the character Tom Wingo in the film, The Prince of Tides:  “I am a writer, a teacher, a coach, and a well-loved man. And that is more than enough.”

Jim Willis
I am a writer, college professor, and author of several nonfiction books, including three on the decade of the 1960s. Several wonderful essays of gifted Retrospect authors appear in my book, "Daily Life in the 1960s."