An Anniversary Love Story

I felt compelled to write the entire story, since we had so many wonderful comments about the 1 small paragraph I wrote yesterday for an anniversary post on Facebook. The story is nothing short of a miracle, so if you like love stories and miracles, please continue to read. I will keep it as short as I possibly can.

I did not care about attending college but for one reason, and that was to find a wife. I was making plenty of money and felt that college would only slow me down. I had plans! I had a dream to get married, build a ranch-style home and put up a white ranch rail fence, get a dog, have 2 children and live happily ever after! So, I registered at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Ga. I already lived on the mountain, so it made the decision quite simple.

It was 1980. My first week there. The big day. The guys were allowed to go meet the girls at their dorms. The first dorm I visited, she was sitting on the floor. Her name was Jill. I didn’t go to any other dorm that day. I didn’t need to. I had found the woman I wanted to marry. SHE was Smokin Hot! 35 years later, she is even more Smokin Hot than before and she has been my wife for 29 years. This is the actual picture taken that evening in Jill’s dorm room.

Jill is one of 4 missionary daughters. She was born in Mexico City, and lived there and many other places south of the border for most of her childhood. She was this adorable little girl, with a blonde Dorothy Hammil hair style, and that beautiful smile was mesmerizing.

Jill’s idea was a bit different than mine. She was planning on marrying a tall slender athletic type of guy who was most probably a missionary like her father. That wasn’t me unfortunately, and that made for a tough hurdle to overcome. We did however get along really well and we spent hours over the next week or so, talking and becoming great friends. During that friendship over those next few weeks I was really struggling when she started to go out with some of the athletes from the school. I couldn’t get angry about it though because we were just friends, so I started dating other girls at the same time. But mostly to try to make her jealous. You see, I was a so-so athlete, more so than so, unfortunately, so I couldn’t compete with those guys. I had to compete with my business acumen. 😉 I had a business at the time and two other jobs. I was determined to make money while at school and I always had plenty AND I had a truck, which was huge, since our college was isolated from most activities, (being 2300 feet above the city of Chattanooga).

Because I had a vehicle, I was finally able to coax her into going out with me some 3 weeks or so after meeting her for the first time in that dorm room. I was so excited! For some reason which now escapes me, we went all the way to Hixson Tennessee, about 45 minutes away for dinner at a little restaurant called Mr Steak and then we went to the mall to walk around and people watch. 😉 She actually let me hold her hand that night, but I think she was probably trying to keep from hurting my feelings. We really did have a great time, however – especially me, I was absolutely head over heals in love and I just had to tell her. LOL UGH! Why did I have to tell her?

We returned to the school later that evening and we sat in the car overlooking the valley below when I promptly told her that I was incredibly in love and planned to marry her. Look, I didn’t feel like I had a choice. If I didn’t let her know my feelings, someone else was going to sweep her off her feet and she might marry them instead. Her response was “um…. over my dead body!” LOL Seriously, she was not a happy camper. Looking back at it now, a first date semi proposal was not a good idea.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months until I was finally able to convince her to go out with me again. We went to this wonderful Greek Restaurant in RedBank, and we both really loved it. Of course it had been months since she had been off the mountain, so that’s one thing to remember as to why she liked it so much. That restaurant and my truck were the two main things I had going for me. She loved that restaurant, and none of the jocks had a car. LOL

Several weeks went by and I finally got her to agree to date me. I was ecstatic!! Of course I had to go totally overboard and start buying her things. Remember, I had money. I’ll never forget the day I bought license plates that said “John and Jill” and put them on the back of my truck. She did not like that at all, especially when I gave her a key and told her the truck was hers. Of course she needed a vehicle, so she took it out for a spin and promptly ran out of gas, because I have a propensity to drive on fumes. That’s just me, but that event caused her to throw the keys back to me and turn me down. “and take those tags off the truck!” I took it like a man. 😉 She loved me, I could tell. LOLOL

A couple of weeks later she broke things off. I did not take that like a man as I should have. I literally wept over that event and responded in the absolute opposite way I should have. I started to watch her every move. I guess you could call it stalking. ;)) I would make sure to position myself in certain areas around the school so she would have to walk by me on her way to class. I would intentionally play flag football out in the front of the school just below her dorm window. When her parents would come to visit her, I would make it a point to hang with them so I could see Jill when she came down to see them. This went on for a year. Jill knew what I was doing. She would walk the opposite way when she would see where I was. She would never show her face in her window while I was playing football, otherwise I would see that as “progress”. She would even hurry off the basketball court after her games, for fear that I would come down to the court to see her.

I remember one really embarrassing moment when I wanted to impress her during one of her basketball games and entered the half court contest. The entire school was there and she was sitting on the front bleacher with her team mates. I proceeded to air ball it by a mile and I remember her face in her hands. That was a rough night.

I know it now, but didn’t know it then, but she always had feelings for me, she just couldn’t handle the way I did things. She didn’t like my perspective on money, I wasn’t interested in being a missionary, I was not tall and slender, I was not overly athletic, and her parents had told her before school even started that she couldn’t get married until after she graduated, so why date someone seriously if she had to wait 4 years? Plus I was a nuisance!!

I remember finally getting her to go back to the Greek restaurant with me one evening, and we got back together. She finally gave in, until the next week when she broke it off with me again, and I was determined that would be for the last time.

My family moved to Texas, and so did I. After two years of fighting this situation with Jill, dating tons of other girls at the school and talking about Jill to them, lol I left for good and decided it was just not going to happen. I was miserable, I was angry, and I was late with my plan of getting married and having that white ranch rail fence. 😉 I had cried enough over her. Time to move on.

6 months after moving to Texas, I was sitting in my office where I sold new Buicks for a living, and I had a soft moment and decided to call her. We had a great conversation. Of course, carrying it too far is my middle name so I asked if I could come visit. She reluctantly said yes, and I was there the next day. We had a great day together. She cooked for me for the very first time, and it was the BEST PBJ I have ever tasted. I had to leave the next morning to get back to work, so I had to move quickly and she agreed to get back together!!

The trip home was glorious! I had finally won her over. I couldn’t wait to get home and call her. Instead, as I walked into the door the phone was ringing and it was Jill crying. She just had to break it off with me. She felt so bad. We cried together for an hour. I cried by myself for days. Evidently she did as well. My anger was back, my wall was up, and I wrote it off again… for the last time.

2 years later, having totally lost track of her, some great friends came through Texas on their way to California. He had taken a position as the principal of a Christian school out there and they had a few hours to visit. During lunch, we started asking questions about his new job and he proceeded to look at me and said, “By the way, I just hired a new teacher who went to your college, do you know the name Jill Hamilton?” Are you kidding me??? I have totally lost track of this girl and someone I know hires her 3k miles from where I saw her last and he just happens to come visit and ask me If I knew her. Really??? Other than my mother telling me to don’t even think about it, there was complete silence. I admitted that I knew her and left it at that. Of course on the side, I had to get her address from him. Do I dare? Should I write her or throw the address away? What if she doesn’t respond? So I came up with a plan.

Keep in mind that back then, there was no such thing as computers or ways to keep pictures. They were real pictures that you held in your hand to look at, or of course place them in a frame or picture book. So I sent her a letter and included a picture of my sister’s first baby. I informed her that it was my only one, and I would appreciate it if she would send it back to me. LOL Brilliant!! Of course that didn’t sit well with her because she knew exactly what I was attempting, and while she contemplated just sending back the picture by itself, she decided not to be mean and wrote a quick letter. Of course I read into that letter and realized she really loved me. LOL

I got in touch with our friend who hired her out in LA, and asked him for her phone number and I got up the courage to call. She was busy at the time so I asked if I could call her back. She said “next week, same time” That was the longest week of my life, and the best phone call of my life. We talked for 6 hours. When we finally decided to hang up, I asked her if there was any way she would let me come see her. She said “call me in a week, same time, and I will let you know”. UGH! another week?? Had I just blown it again? Had I moved too fast again? Was she going to say no?? So the next week I called her according to plan.  She picked up the phone and before I had a chance to say anything, she said “you are not here yet”? I was on a plane the next morning on a redeye from Houston to LA. Now that’s fast!

I had no idea what to expect when I got off that airplane. I was going to play it cool. I was going to give her a quick hug and play coy. I wasn’t going to rush things ever again. I walked down the stairs on to the tarmac and there she was standing outside waiting for me. She met me at the bottom of the stairway and planted the biggest kiss on me that you could imagine. I was stunned and for the first time in my life, speechless. She had a big day planned, we were headed to Disneyland. I had never been, and I was excited to experience it with her.

So you will know, over the past 5 years, mainly in the first 3, I had asked Jill to marry me at least a dozen times. Those proposals were met with a dozen no’s. Somehow I am a glutton for punishment, because I threw out all caution to the wind and figured, hey, I am going to either go home happy or heartbroken again, I might as well get it over with instead of drawing it out for a few days. So during the electric parade, I asked her again and without hesitation, she said yes. She knew that if she had allowed me to come out, I was going to propose once again, so she had to decide before my arrival what her decision was going to be. As she puts it, “for the last two years I have compared every guy I went out with to you and no one matched up. I always loved you but you were just so obnoxious.”

We were married 10 months later.

Now 29 years almost to the day, we are more excited about our lives together than we have ever been. We have 4 wonderful children, 3 of whom are married and the 4th is independent and lives in his own home. We are empty nesters on a fun journey together, living in a motorhome, seeing the countryside, while we work and play.  God willing we will have another wonderful 29 years together.