ON TO HIGH SCHOOL

During the first or second week of the tenth grade I noticed that the boy who had the role of the pilot in the ninth grde play was in my geometry class. One evening, Bob Heffner stopped by our house for a visit, as he sometimes did. Bob had a list of girls as long as your arm that he kept on his string of "pleasant diversions". I asked him if he had a brother named Walter, and when he replied in the affirmative I said," Hey, he's pretty cute, why don't you bring him over here with you sometime?" the very next evening Bob showed up on the doorstep with Walter in tow! That occured maybe two more times, and after that Walter came as a single. Our first date consisted of meeting him after a high school band concert, in which he was playing, at the Fox Theater. He walked home with me, and that was the beginning of a six year friendship which eventually blossumed ino much more. There was a period, during those years, when the situation became too confining and we broke up for about a year. During that time we both dated other people, in fact, Walter was going steady with another girl when we started looking at each other once more. I neglected to mention that previous to the "breaking up", near the end of summer vacation after tenth grade, in fact, just the first week of school in the eleventh grade Bob, Walter's brother, was killed in a bicycle, car accident. The two boys had been over to our house looking at pictures our family had taken on a Canadian vacation, that we'd just returned home from. Bob went home early to work on his bike, which he was making into a racing bike, and Walter soon followed. When he got home Bob, and a friend, were just finishing the project, so they asked Walter to get his bike, so the three of them could go riding around a few blocks to try out Bob's bike. A few blocks from home Bob was racing down the street with his head down in a racing posture, with Walter and the other boy following behind, when coming to an innersections a car came around the corner. Bob struck the car, his head hiting just above the door on the passenger side. He never regained consciousness. What a terrible loss of a very fine young man.
Walter and I were driving out around Puddlestone Lake one evening, sometime during the eleventh grade period, when Walter brought up the subject of marriage. Needless to say, a girl always remembers her first marriage proposal and the time and place it occurred! It came as a complete surprise to me, and all I could say was, "Don't you think we're a little young?" he replied, "Oh, I don't mean now, I'm thinking about maybe ten years in the future!" Then, he added, "I like to make plans quite a while ahead." I found myself answering, "The person that I marry has to have ten thousand dollars in the bank." Walter thought about that for a minute, and said, "Well, it will probably take me that long to accomplish it." To my recollection, the subject never came up again until after World War 2 started!