Old Acquaintance

In the mail was an invitation to the reunion dinner for alums of Paschal High School. On the list of committee members I saw a familiar name: Lunda May O’Toole.

I had not talked to Lunda May since August, 1952. Wally and I were married on August 3 and left immediately for Chicago. Lunda May and Bob were to be married two weeks later. While I was living in Chicago, my mother wrote me of seeing her in the grocery store from time to time – I heard that her little boy had polio – but I knew little of what happened to her in the last 50 years.

We were children of the Depression. My family lived on the corner of the 1800 block of South Adams Street. Lunda May’s .father built a new house across the street. Both were small, frame houses. Our old house had five square rooms, with the one bathroom tacked onto the back after the house was built. To take a bath or use the toilet, my brothers and I had to go through our parents’ bedroom. The Keiths’ new house, just as small, seemed much more modern. Its one bathroom was between the two bedrooms.

Lunda May and I went to different elementary schools. (Mother transferred my brother and me to a school near my grandmother’s house, as she went to her mother’s every day.) But we were together in junior high and high school. We both played in the junior high orchestra. Even then she was accomplished violinist. I attempted the cello, but played so badly that I gave up when I entered high school.

By that time my family had moved to a larger house. Lunda May’s family remained on South Adams Street. But we both went to Paschal High, where we ate lunch together every day.

I was a good student; she was a better scholar. She was salutatorian of our graduating class. The girl whose grade points were barely higher than Lunda May’s was given the valedictorian scholarship. She did not need it. The girl was the daughter of a physics professor at Texas Christian University. Lunda May’s family struggled to pay college tuition. (The next year Bob Adams received a scholarship to Harvard and gave up the honor of being valedictorian so that the second ranking graduate could have the scholarship to a Texas university.)

After high school, we saw each other now and then. We went to different colleges. I don’t know what she did after graduation. I became a reporter for the Fort Worth Press.

We sent each other wedding invitations. I remember she and Bob O’Toole came to our house to bring me a wedding gift. It was the first and only time I met him. Lunda May and I left him alone in the living room while we went back to my bedroom where I showed her my wedding dress. I wondered if he was a good person, or if, like me, the starry-eyed romance brought years of living with a difficult man.

The alumni association sent me her address and phone number. I picked up the phone and called her. Lunda May's voice sounded as cheerful and full of life as when she was a teenager.

While I married, divorced, remarried, was widowed, and lived in various houses and apartments in five states (and for six weeks in a house in England!), Lunda May and Bob also lived in several places, but always in the Fort Worth area.

They’ve been married for 58 years. Their son, whose left arm is useless because of polio, has a successful career. He and his wife, whom Lunda May adores, live in a beautiful home on a nearby lake. Lunda May and Bob also have a daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. They fill her life with joy.

Belief in God is the sustaining force in their lives. They use their love of music in service at the Assembly of God Church. Lunda May switched from violin to cello, and continues to play at age 81. She sang in the church choir, which Bob directed. She sounded as busy and enthusiastic about life as the girl I remembered.

At our age, when tragedy marks the lives of friends, many are dead, and all who remain suffer from some ailment or another, it was great to connect with this old friend and to hear that, staying right at home, she indeed has had a good life.