A Detour For Love

By As told to Michelle Lodge

When, at 19, I set out from Houston in pursuit of an old sweetheart in Illinois, I had no idea that true romance was waiting for me instead in Kansas City.

It was 1936. I was a cub reporter for the Houston Press. Having earned my first paid vacation, I boarded a train with two weeks' salary in my pocket--all of $30! My first stop was in Kansas City, Mo., where I had lived till I was 11 and where my grandparents still lived. I had planned to go on to Anna, Ill., to call on my friend, an attractive, petite brunet I'd dated in high school in Houston. After two years of love letters to her, I was keen to discover whether her feelings for me matched mine for her.

I would never find out.

That's because love of a different sort took hold of me instantaneously. As I was reading the Kansas City Star on my grandparents' front porch, I noticed an item about an upstart 100-watt radio station called KCMO. I knew immediately I wanted to work there. After auditioning by reading articles I'd adapted from the Star, I was hired as a newsman and sports announcer. So I scratched my plans to reunite with my would-be flame in Illinois.

Some time later, love at first sight struck me again. I looked up from my desk one day and saw a smashing redhead coming down the corridor. "Oh, boy, is she pretty!" I said to myself. "I've got to meet her."

The next Monday, I was thrilled when she reappeared at the station. I pumped my boss for details and found out her name was Mary Elizabeth Maxwell--but she went by the name Betsy--and that, as a recent graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, she had been hired to write ad copy.

I remember being uncharacteristically shy with Betsy, hesitant even to talk to her. One day, though, my boss asked me to read a hair-product commercial the station was recording. When I showed up in the studio, there stood my gorgeous redhead, ready to read the female part. After the final take, feeling frustrated by the exercise, I crumpled the script, threw it on the floor and fumed, "Who in the world writes this junk?"

"I do," answered Betsy.

Not an auspicious opening for romance, I realized. But I made it up to her by taking her to lunch.

I was attracted to Betsy at first glimpse. But as I got to know her, I found myself falling in love with her quick mind, offbeat sense of humor and agility on the dance floor, where I thought I had mastered the fox-trot. We danced our way to the altar. We married in 1940, following a courtship that, like the one with my Houston friend, involved separation.

In 1937, I accepted a reporting job in Texas with the United Press, while Betsy remained in Kansas City writing greeting-card verses for Hallmark. Love-struck and lonesome, I found my way back to Betsy as a traffic manager in Kansas City for Braniff Airlines. Because I'd been away, I now had other suitors to edge out. I ingratiated myself with Betsy's large, close-knit and witty family and kept her away from the competition by wooing her over dinner and dancing.

Even if I hadn't stopped over in Kansas City nearly 70 years ago, I suspect my professional life would have developed as it did. I already had fire in my belly for journalism, especially the then emerging fields of radio and television broadcasting.

But I can't say that my private life would have turned out as happy. Perhaps I might never have found my Betsy, who, after 64 years of marriage, was still as beautiful when she died this year as the day I first saw her. Meeting such a bright and supportive woman brought me a lifetime of joy and tenderness. And for me, that was key. --As told to Michelle Lodge