I’ve Danced My Life Away

We Were Married for 58 Years

ED: How did you meet your husband?
FS: Well, now there’s another story. Jake Crockett used be a landscape architect here, and his wife was Isabel Edwards, and she taught sixth grade up at the other building, up at Mary Taylor school. And I had-I had rented a little house up on Limerock Street-and I was staying by myself. And Jake was an old friend of mine - I used to dance with him a lot. And he called up one night and I was engaged to another man.

Jake called up and he said, "You true blue?" and I said, "Yes I am. What do you have to offer?" He said, "Well, I have a young engineer staying here and we’d like to go up to Belfast and get a hamburger. Do you want to go?" I said, "Yes, I’ll go." I was always ready to go. So I went, and I met Fred [Schipper]. Fred was the engineer who was staying there and he was building a girls’ camp up there. Now it belongs to the Episcopalians - Bishop’s Wood or something? Anyway, he was sent here by Hageman Harris to build this fancy girls’ camp up on the Hope Road, and he was staying down at the Belmont Inn and was very unhappy and lonely and everything, so Jake said to come on up and stay with him. So we went up there and that’s when they thought they’d entertain him one night and take him up to Belfast and get a hamburger. There used to be a real good place up there to get a hamburger. So I went! That was in October and in December I flew to New York and broke my engagement and we were married the next April. We were married for 58 years.

ED: So it’s a good thing you went for that hamburger that night.
FS: It was a wonderful thing, wonderful. He was a very, very nice man wasn’t he Barbie?
BD: Yes.
FS: Best, best, best, best.