I was born to dance. I’ve been dancing all my life, ever since my mother, who gave up a dancing career on the stage when she married my father, picked me up and twirled me around as an infant. As much as I must have loved dancing with her, her greatest gift to me was her “unconditional love” during her lifetime.
My parents divorced after only 5 years of marriage, but my father remarried a lovely lady who also loved to dance. They would take me to “supper clubs” and I would listen to the music and watch them dance—occasionally my step-mother Mary would invite me to dance.
My college years fortunately occurred during the “debutante” era, and most of the girls who were friends of mine “came out” at those parties. As a college man, if you could dance, you were invited to all the parties!
My favorite “deb” party was thrown by Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company for his daughter Charlotte in the summer of 1957. It was such an elegant party that they had the two most famous society dance orchestras playing at alternate times—Lester Lanin and Meyer Davis, followed by a serenade to Charlotte by Nat King Cole.
I danced with Charlotte for about 15 seconds, and during that brief interlude, it did occur to me that if I could hang on to her long enough, my problems were over. Unfortunately, Charlotte danced like a Mack truck, and fortunately someone else cut in, and she was gone from my life.
Like many things that occur in our lives, my daughter’s births almost didn’t happen. The year before I married their mother Wynn, I was planning on sailing around the world, as my father had done in his youth. Their mother-to-be said words to the effect “have a great trip, but don’t expect me to be on the dock when you return.” I thought about that for awhile, decided the trip was not what I wanted, and asked her to marry me, which she did. Wynn loved to dance, which was one of the primary reasons we were so attracted to each other—and we kept dancing throughout our marriage.
