Snow had fallen overnight, and when we arrived at Skyline, the road was closed. The trip was ruined.
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(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.”

I hadn’t realized how closely Patti and John had listened when I’d described my experience at the Chilmark Writer’s Workshop on Martha’s Vineyard, a wonderful, supportive writing workshop given by Nancy Slonim Aronie, an island legend (and beyond; she teaches at Kripalu, is featured on “All Things Considered”, and just published her third book). I took it three times between 2003-2011. It wasn’t about how to craft an excellent story, but rather about finding one’s voice and being in a magical writing circle where everyone divulged revealing tales about themselves. Nancy talked about various aspects of writing on each of the four days of the course, then gave us prompts, including one to write overnight and spend at least 15 minutes on it. I confess, a few of those stories made their way onto this site. We grew as we shared these intimate stories. Nancy insisted that we only give positive comments. John picked up on that too. So Retrospect became a place for supportive comments, not criticizing. Long-distance friendships were made. Serious discussions took place. Personal tales revealed.

John, Patti and a close friend of theirs worked long and hard to craft a user-friendly platform where Boomers could share their tales on a weekly basis, based on site-based prompts, or choose a story-line of one’s own. Positive comments could be offered, but only by vetted users of the site. The administrators hoped to build a wide community and a huge inventory of stories around shared prompts relating to topics from our collective experiences. It worked well for a long time, but it also took a lot of time and effort on everyone’s part to come up with interesting, probing prompts and keep improving the application while attracting new writers and readers.

I was flattered when my friends approached me in the late fall of 2015 with the request to be a beta tester of the site (we had discussed the idea over dinner once when we saw them, earlier in the year. They know me well and knew that I am not shy about telling my stories and I had some good ones to share). John helped me set up my online profile and knew that if I could use their site, then it was tech-friendly enough for anyone. They gave prompts four weeks in advance. I like to write ahead, so I can let my thoughts marinate, then come back and edit! My assignment was to write three stories and comment on three others, just to see how it would go. The first prompt was “What We Ate” (again, based on the first story always written up in Chilmark, which was “Dinner at our house was…”). The story went live on December 14, 2015 – 9 years ago.

Brisket

I was hooked. I wrote and wrote – every week for eight years. I wrote weeks ahead so that I had a story to put up, even when we were traveling. But keeping this site going took a tremendous amount of effort, not just coming up with new, interesting prompts, but gaining new authors and readers, keeping out the spam, keeping the software running. So, after three years, my friends decided it was time to pack it in. I wrote a fond tribute to them for the prompt “Turning Points”, which went live on December 31, 2018.

Moving On

Yet, several writers didn’t want this great site to end, so took it over from Patti, John and Susan, with new Admins and a new infusion of capital. After a few month’s hiatus, it started up again on March 1, 2019 with the prompt “New Beginnings”.

“Retro” Revival

I used to post my stories to Facebook, but discovered that wasn’t a good idea, for privacy reasons, so asked my readers to indicate who would like to receive a link each week as the story went live. The new Admins moved the publishing day from Monday to Saturday and by this time I had a nice list of people to whom I sent the story link. I decided that I had to write a letter of introduction before sending out the link, so somehow, I wrote two stories each week (in a manner of speaking). My list grew and changed, as more people learned about these stories. And after several years, these new administrators had also run their course. But again, current writers stepped in to take the site over, planning the new prompts each week. Yet with each iteration, features were lost on the site (we weren’t keeping up with changes in underlying software).

By the end of 2023, I had written 360 stories. It took a lot of time to think, write and search through old photo albums, looking for just the right photos to use to illustrate my stories. And I felt like I’d said what I had to say. When I told my son that I was no longer going to write on a weekly basis, he said 360 was a good number – I had come full circle. So at the beginning of this year, I only wrote when a prompt really spoke to me, or I found an old prompt and wrote a story when I was really upset about something.

It seems I wasn’t alone in taking a step back. Now, very few people wrote on a weekly basis, so it was determined that this would be the final prompt. We had a great run. The site will stay live, so people can continue to read the stories, or write if the spirit moves them (and I will have an opportunity to print my stories – I haven’t saved or printed anything since 2018). We made great friends along the way (we even had a Retro get-together or two – here is a local one, though NYC friends drove up for this brunch). There are four writers at this table.

Now I bid you adieu. Be kind and take care of one another. Keep in touch, I still want to hear from you. And keep telling your story.

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it" -- Goethe
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Baby Grand

My father was a self-taught classical pianist and throughout my childhood the sounds of his music rang through our house.  And in my mind’s eye I can still see him sitting at the baby grand playing a piece by Chopin or Beethoven.  (See Moonlight Sonata)

That baby grand followed my folks from the house I grew up in,  to one they moved to in their later years,  and of course that house too was filled with my dad’s beautiful music – until years later when he died and the piano stood there silently,  as if missing him as much as we did.

And less than three years later my mother was gone,  and the sad task of selling their house fell to us.  Family and friends took some of my folks’  furnishings,  books,  and keepsakes,  but no one had room for a baby grand.

At a neighbor’s suggestion I advertised in the local paper that the baby grand would be given gratis to someone who would arrange for piano movers to take it.   A lovely young family replied and said they’d love to have it for their musical son.

The movers arrived,  removed its legs,  wrapped the piano securely,  and set it out on my parents’ front porch ready to load on their van.  Then watching that van pull away from my parents’ house was heart-wrenching,  but I knew my dad’s baby grand was going to a good home.

And I knew what was a bittersweet ending for our family would be a sweet beginning for another.

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

The Duck Pond

My parents,  lifelong New Yorkers, would escape the city’s summer heat for vacations in the mountains –  in New York’s Catskills or New England’s Berkshires.

Yet as they got older it was the winter cold that drove them out of the city.   And like many east coasters,  Florida became a desired winter destination – although my mother protested that it was not her first choice but it seemed all her friends were headed down there!

And so for several winters my folks did spend some time in Florida,  although not the whole season as my father wasn’t retired.  In fact my father’s refusal to retire was a sore point between them! (See Around the World in 80 Days)

Then one sad September day my dad died  — with his boots on as he’d always wanted.  My folks had rented a Florida condo for a few weeks again for that winter and we hoped my mother would go.   And for a few more years she did and enjoyed her condo which overlooked a small duck pond.  She loved to watch what she called “my ducks”,  and of course she enjoyed the company of her brother and sister-in-law and friends who lived nearby.

We visited her in Florida each year,  and then one winter I flew down myself,  my husband to join me later.   But rather than pick me up at the airport as she usually did,  my mother told me to take a cab and when I got to her house I found her in bed and terribly weak.   Alarmed,  I took her to the doctor the next day and he immediately hospitalized her.

My mom died a week or so later.  But her last words had comforted me,  she’d told me not to mourn as she’d lived a long and happy life.  (See The Dinner Party)

When we got back to my mother’s house I went to the pond to bring the sad news to her ducks.

– Dana Susan Lehrman

September was my birthday, it was the start of a new school year, the sticky summer was through, the air was crisp and I might even have some new clothes. Of course it was my favorite.
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In the face of injustice ... resistance.
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I’m driving to work at the main post office in downtown Indianapolis.  I should be in college for my senior year, but I have been suspended due to my participation in disruptive protests during Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia in the spring of 1970.

Indianapolis is my hometown. I’m back in the house, living with my parents and two younger siblings. I have taken a civil service test, gotten a high score, and earned a full-time job (a career appointment, as it’s called) as a letter carrier. The guys I work with predict that I won’t go back to school once I get accustomed to making that hefty wage of $3.51 an hour and seeing it in my paycheck every other week.

In my memories of driving south on Allisonville Road to Fall Creek Boulevard and then into the central part of the city, it is sometimes raining and other times dry, but always it is dark–pitch dark.  And on the car radio, I hear the dulcet tones of young Michael Jackson—a Hoosier like me. He is still a member of the Jackson Five and his voice is imprinted on my memory: “You and I must make a pact. We must bring salvation back. Where there is love, I’ll be there…”

My position requires me to clock in at the postal garage no later than 4:30 AM, six days a week.  Once I’ve done that, it’s time to locate my three-quarter ton truck and start the engine. I guess there was no fear of overnight vehicle rustlers in downtown Indy, because the ignition keys are sitting right there on the dashboard.

Learning to drive the truck had been a surprisingly relaxed process, thanks mostly to the middle-aged, diminutive white letter carrier who had the responsibility to spend a few hours getting me up-to-speed on it. His last name was Foley, and that’s the only name I ever heard people call him. Foley had a stutter and to me, seemed remarkably comfortable with it. Anyone who was sentient in Indianapolis in 1970 knew the name A.J. Foyt, who won the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race three times in the 1960s. When, under Foley’s tutelage, I was having a bit of difficulty backing the truck out from a parking spot, he reassured me that, “E-e-ven A.J. F-f-f-oyt would make a f-f-few mistakes.” The next day, I picked up a form he had signed to verify that I was approved to drive the truck independently. With the form was a friendly note, wishing me well. He had signed it in his own cursive hand, last name only: “F-f-f-foley.”

In October of 1970, I am the very first letter carrier in the Indianapolis post office to begin my shift each morning. I don’t mean just in the downtown station; I mean in the whole city. There are clerks and mail handlers and supervisors who work overnight, but the carriers mostly come on at six in the morning, at the substations as well as the main downtown P.O. My shift begins earlier because my deliveries are deemed to be unusually critical.  If someone in Indiana was writing to their state senator or state representative between September 1970 and January 1971, I was the man bringing their letter to the right place.

I am dropping off bags of mail at the state capitol, the Governor’s Mansion, and the State Library.  These institutions each have their own employees coming in early to sort the morning mail. They count on the man in my position to get the bags of mail there in plenty of time. My shift begins so early that if I wake up feeling sick or for some other reason cannot make it to work, there is no supervisor on duty to call. Instead, I am to call a man named Richard–the carrier who had most recently held the same position. I am supposed to reach him the night before, if possible, to give him time to rearrange his plans for the morning.

Once I have the truck revved up, I drive just a mile away and park in the indoor parking lot of the downtown post office. I go inside, greet the overnight clerks sorting mail, and find the bags of mail that are for my route, already pulled together and closed and labelled, for the Governor and the other state offices. The State Library always has the most voluminous mail because they are the source of Braille materials. People who are blind can borrow and return materials by mail from anywhere in the state of Indiana. I learn from one of the other carriers that this is a free service. At least it was back then. A book or magazine republished in Braille is substantially thicker than the original, so that makes for some considerable amount of mail.

It was not challenging to complete the run to those state institutions on time. By 6:30 am, I am back at the main station and ready to fulfill my next role—not as a deliverer of mail but as a “relay man.”  This is my most fun time of the day, as I get to relax and be a “fly on the wall” and listen to the colorful banter of the other letter carriers. They have mostly clocked in at 6:00 am and now they’re sorting mail at their individual workstations as they keep up an endless stream of conversation.  I call it “conversation” but nobody is talking one-on-one; it is a sort of “group conversation” like you might have at a small dinner party, but at this dinner party, nobody can see each other. Each man concentrates on sorting letters properly within his own workstation. When someone speaks up, he is sort of “broadcasting” to the 8 or 10 carriers nearby. He strives to keep his contribution to the dialogue loud enough for them all to hear, interesting enough that it will be worthwhile straining a bit to hear it, and concise enough to give all the brothers a chance to speak.

I say, “all the brothers,” because at least two-thirds of the carriers at the downtown station are African-American men, and they set the tone and the style for the conversational interchange. They range in age from late 20s to mid-50s.  There are a few white guys, one or two white women and no Black women carriers at the station at that time—though several women of color were working nearby as clerks or mail handlers.

“I hear the Inspectors be comin’ around starting next week,” one guy calls out.

“Oh,” retorts another, “I gotta look in my closet and get out them slow walkin’ shoes!”
“Right,” comes another voice. “Them deliveries be takin’ a lot o’ extra time when the Inspector comin’ around.”

“Your slow walkin’ shoes be leather shoes, or sneakers?” someone calls out. ”Can’t no sneakers be slow enough,” another voice chimes in, “Gotta be some heavy damn leather, heavy damn, slow walkin’ leather.”

Obie, one of the few men who might be over sixty, pipes up, casting one eye in my direction. He had noticed me looking around quizzically during this discussion about inspectors and shoes. “College boy wanna know wny folk be walkin’ slow when the Inspector come around.”

“Who college boy?” This from one of the two men named Woods—one is Kenny and one is Eddie, not related.  “You don’t know college boy?” Obie answers.  “811!”

Every run in a truck has a number, and my early morning run was number 811. “811 a college boy?” Kenny asked—I’m thinking the taller one is Kenny Woods and the shorter one is Eddie. “Didn’t know that.  He go down to Bloomington?” He is referring to the main campus of Indiana University, less than 2 hours south of Indianapolis, where a ton of my North Central High School (class of 1967) friends are attending. “Nah, 811 too smart for Bloomington. He goin’ somewhere out East. Right, college boy?” “Yes, I go to a school in Boston.”  “Boston!  You root for them Red Sox?”  “Who care about who he root for? You can ask him later. He wanna know about them slow walkin’ shoes.” “I’ll tell ‘im,” says the shorter guy named Woods, whom I think is Eddie.

He leaves his case, comes over to me and explains privately about the whole inspector thing. An inspector comes from outside the local postal station and walks the whole route with each letter carrier, once every two years or so. This is an effort to ensure that each route requires roughly the same amount of time and effort as any other route.  Some neighborhoods get more populated—with new homes or apartment buildings added—while others get depleted, with homes abandoned or businesses expanded to take over parcels that were formerly residential. As these concentrations of addresses ebb and flow, it is natural that the boundaries of the various walking routes (driving routes too) need to be redrawn to maintain overall equivalence.

No carrier would object if an inspector found he had too many deliveries on his route and had to take some away. Their fear was of the opposite—that an inspector would conclude that a route needed to take on additional addresses, or more likely entire blocks of additional addresses, to bring it up to the standard.

Given this situation, every letter carrier’s hope was to make their route seem as time-consuming as possible when the inspector came around—thus the need for those ‘slow walking shoes.’ But then all the rest of the time, each one developed as many shortcuts as possible to reduce the time required. Most guys could finish their routes fast enough to take a two-hour lunch instead of the 30-minute paid lunch that was authorized and still come back to the station and clock out at the expected time. This explained why, any time I took over someone’s deliveries for the day, they would always caution me not to come back to the station till at least three o’clock. It wouldn’t do for the boss man to see a greenhorn knock out the whole route faster than the regular man.

When an inspector showed up, as Mr. Woods explained to me, all the shortcuts a carrier normally used went out the window. The aim was to convince the inspector that making deliveries on his route required every minute that it was currently allotted, maybe even more. Make it look like he had a hard time even squeezing in that thirty-minute lunch. I expressed my appreciation for his letting me in on what they were discussing. As he returned to his case, the banter had not ceased.

“Better tell my girlfriend I won’t be home till 4’o’clock when that Inspector come around,” chimes in another man. “What she goin’ think when you spendin’ more time with the inspector than you spend with her?”  “My girlfriend ain’t stupid! She know she can’t add on no streets to my route! Inspector can!”

“She can’t add nothing on your streets, brother man. But she can take away something under your sheets!” Another voice  reprises the comment with a raucous laugh.  “Brother man worried about somebody f-ing with his streets. He better start worrying what’s underneath his sheets.” And so it went, not just that day but every day, The rhythmic, evocative, well-informed, loud, humorous repartee of the hardworking letter carriers of central Indianapolis.

Resistance takes courage and commitment, two things I often find that I have a short supply of. But sometimes….even I have limits.