There were only two women in my life who I ever wanted to marry.
I used to say that “one of them was a nice Italian girl from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.” Turned out she wasn’t so nice; thank NEIL, GOD, that I didn’t marry her, and, truth be told. Myrna saved me from her.
Yes, I did meet and go out with some very nice girls when I was at Beach High and later, but with only one exception, Maryann and Myrna were the only two who I ever wanted to marry.
After I graduated Beach High in June of ’62, as a swimmer I wanted to go to a school with a great swimming program and my dear and longtime and still great friend, Charlie Clark and I decided to go to 1/2SU. (You’ve heard of that place—home of the semi-holes—as I certainly had no interest in being a fartin’ tater in Gainesville).
Well, one term was it for me and while I met a really nice girl by the name of Molly Alderson, who lived in 1/2assee, how could it work? She lived there and I lived on Miami Beach. Anyway, once the NOT fahn Southern anything but gentlemen of Kappa Alpha (fraternity) firebombed the TEP house there (proud to say that I am still a TEP) I decided that place wasn’t for me and I came home in December and immediately went to work at Fontainebleau, where I was hired first as a cabana boy, then, shortly asked to become teen-age counselor and then, after Ziggy Lane, our Director of Entertainment, left, Bert Sheldon 27, 1976, a bit more than ten years later.
I have always been a virulent anti-smoker, but one night, going back to work after taking care of the day time activities I walked through the Fleur de Lis dining room and saw two women at a table, an older lady and this incredibly sexy younger lady holding a cigarette. I was stunned and resolved to meet her on the pool deck the next day.
The following day I looked for her endlessly but, no, she was not there until, some time after noon, she suddenly appeared, holding a cigarette and approaching her I immediately said, “how come every time I see you, you’re smoking,” to which she replied, catching me off guard, “I didn’t know you were watching me so closely!” I rebounded quickly, introduced myself, told her who I was, pointing out the words “Fontainebleau Social Staff” in blue on my white t-shirt, was my part of my daily daytime outfit of white socks, white tennis shoes, white beach boy shorts and the aforementioned t-shirt, so she know I was “for real.”
We arranged to go out that night after work and she was to meet me in the lobby at about either 9:00 or 9:30. I was there waiting when she suddenly showed up (wearing, I think it was, a light blue just about knee-length dress with, on the front, three huge flowers, the likes of which I had never seen before) and, oh, was I taken.
We went for a bite and then back to my house on Biscayne Point on Miami Beach and made love and I brought her back to the hotel. When I came in to work in the morning and went to the Chez Bon Bon coffee shop for breakfast she was there with her dear aunt, with whom she had made the trip and introduced me. Of course, she had a cigarette in her hand but I never ever, before or after, saw a woman who looked so sexy smoking. Later she told me that she had been worried all night that when I came in in the morning I wouldn’t want to see her and that when I smiled and sat down she was incredibly relieved.
The relationship began and she came up to Cornell twice for fraternity weekends and my fraternity brothers—no exaggeration—with their dates sat there staring at her with their mouths wide open, she was that sexy-looking. We talked on the phone and saw each other until I was ready to leave for Christmas break and head for New York City where I had gotten a job as a student dining car steward with the Pennsylvania Railroad and when I called her to tell her she told me that she and Sammy, who she had been dating for seven years before I met her, were getting married. It broke my heart.
I was on my way back to school in January of ’68 (they got married in August of ’67) and there were no more trains from Penn Station to Ithaca so I had to take the bus from the Port Authority bus station at 41st Street and 8th Avenue and she—Maryann—was still in my heart, so I called her at her office from the pay phone on the southeast corner of 41st and 8th and when she answered the phone, “Marubeni” (the Japanese import-export company for which she worked) I said, “Are you happy?” and she replied “no.” Well, dear readers, that was the beginning of an eight-year affair over which time she was going to divorce him and never did and which didn’t end until I told her that Myrna and I were getting married. The rest of that part of the story will be in the next issue!
I lived on Biscayne Point at the north end of Miami Beach and went to Biscayne Elementary School at which there was a sixth-grade teacher by the name of Mrs. Waller. I didn’t have her for sixth grade but she had a reputation as being the toughest teacher in the school, and, interestingly enough, she and her family lived on Biscayne Point, also, and her daughter, a lovely blonde girl by name of Roberta, would be taking her daily walks when I was jogging. We would smile at each other, eventually saying “hello” or “good morning” and shortly thereafter stopping to chat. On one of those chats she invited me to a party in far South Dade County to which I replied by asking if we were going as dates, to which she responded, “oh, no, just come down and maybe you’ll meet somebody.” O M G was somebody or something smiling on me that day!
In those days we did not have high schools with the 5AAAA and lower numbers for athletics, they were all Classes “A,” “B” and “C” based on student body size and the only class C basketball player ever to be named “All-City” by the Miami Herald was the late, great Oliver “Butch” Stallings” who went to school at St. Patrick’s High School on Miami Beach. At some point, I met Butch while I was working at Fontainebleau and gave him a job as one of my counselors, which developed into a warm friendship. After I learned that Roberta and I would not be going to the party as dates, I called Butch and said, “why don’t you come to my house? I’ll drive and maybe we’ll meet somebody nice,” to which he agreed. The party was one week and one day after Thanksgiving of ’73 and it turned out to be the luckiest day of my life.
We went to the party—“way down south”—and I walked around for about 35 minutes not seeing a single person who I wanted to meet. At that point I went to the front door, put my hand on the door knob and then said to myself, “wait a minute, where do you think you’re going? You brought Butch and, obviously, you can’t leave him here” at which point I turned to look at the room and scan for him and directly across the room, standing against the opposite wall, was one of, if not the most stunningly beautiful woman I had ever seen and I stood there, literally, with my mouth hanging open. All of a sudden, Butch was standing next me and he grabbed me by the forearm “You wanna’ meet her?” he said,” to which I replied “do you know her,” to which he then answered with “don’t worry about it” and he dragged me across the room.
When we got to that lady, he grabbed her by the forearm and said to her, “what’s your name?” and she, looking up and smiling said “Myrna.” “Myrna, this is your new friend Seth. Seth, this is your new friend Myrna. Now you can’t say you haven’t been properly introduced.” I was standing there with, literally, my knees knocking and thinking to myself, “holy cow, is this woman gorgeous, but wait a minute, she lives all the way down here and I live on the beach and she is G. U. (Geographically Undesirable for the unaware)” “Well,” I thought, I’ll ask for her number and maybe come down once or twice to take her out. So I did (ask for her number) and much to my gloriously happy shock and surprise (remember, this was before area codes) she said “864-3012.”
“864” I almost yelled, “that’s a North Beach number—where do you live?” And when she told me “The Treasure House on Treasure Island” I nearly plotzed (Yiddishism for fainted!) and said “that’s incredible—I live on Biscayne Point—we’re only seven minutes or so apart.”
Well, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we will conclude that part of the story here, also, with another “to be continued” because I want you to be excitedly awaiting the second parts of both stories, but, and in short and suffice to say, I was Myrna’s third and last husband, she my first and only wife and the only time she ever smoked was between husbands. She brought me my family (other than my beloved brother, Bennett, Beach High ’70 and his daughter, my beautiful niece, Dara, they now being part of our one wonderful family) and our marriage lasted nearly 47 years, she passing away on September 7th, 2023 at the age of 90, looking like she was 50 when she died, keeping in mind that I chased that woman for three years before she caught me!
Hope you enjoyed this real and true anything but a bubbemisseh (another Yiddishism for fable or fairy tale) and looking forward to seeing you on the next go-around.
With warmest good wishes to all, and, as we say in South Florida, “thank you for not shooting and have a MIAMI NICE day!”
