By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
Told By A Friend
It was a warm day in September and the first day of school. As I was walking to catch the school bus, I noticed three kids taunting a young girl. I had never seen her before.
She weighed less than a hundred pounds. I lifted weights and was in good shape, so I walked up to the girl and made it clear that the boys were to leave her alone. “She is a stupid hillbilly,” one of the boys shot back at me, “and I hate these backward Southerners.” I got him in a choke hold until he screamed, “Let me go. I will stop bothering the hillbilly.”
So I let him go and told the boy, “And I want to let you know if anyone bothers you, just let me know. I protect all my friends, even if we have a few disagreements now and then. Let’s shake,” I said as I smiled at him. We shook hands, and the girl and I started to walk to where the bus picked us up.
As we walked to the bus stop, I asked her about herself. “My father left the family, and my mom could not make it on her own, so we moved from Alabama to Detroit to live with a relative, a cousin, actually.” “Oh, I am William Kline.
I am in the 10th grade at Detroit Cooley High School. And you are?” “Michelle White. I am in the 9th grade. Needless to say, I really appreciate you saving me back there! I was scared out of my mind.” “No problem. I thought you looked terrified.” “I was!” With that beginning, I walked to her house each school day and then walked to the school bus until I graduated high school.
During this time, we grew very close. In contrast to how she appeared when I first met her, the 11th-grade Michelle was a beautiful young girl. We both planned to go to college, and I told her, “I am not going to go to college without you.”
She was a grade behind me, so I worked in construction for a year and saved money for college. Michelle was so popular that she was chosen to be the homecoming queen. Although I had already graduated, they bent the rules, and I was chosen to be homecoming king.
When I graduated, I told her, “Remember, I said I am not going to college without you. We have to get married.” So we did, and, in college, lived in the married couples dorm. It turned out that was the best decision we ever made. No parties, no fraternities, no drinking, no smoking pot, which was quite a fad in the late 1950s.
I had a lot of concerns about these problems, but my only negative experience occurred when walking to our dorms one evening, the police were attempting to control a large group of unruly, drunk students. One drunk student was in the face of a cop, yelling. The cop just stood there patiently dealing with the confrontation. Drinking got so bad that the university had to prevent the fraternities from buying beer by the keg.
Date rape claims surfaced several times. One student spent a few days carrying her dorm mattress around campus to complain about the problem and get the university to do something about the date rape problem. What they could do, I had no idea. It was usually a “he said, she said” issue.
A student in my engineering class was accused of date-raping a student. He was a quiet, hardworking nerd, and I did not see any evidence of problematic behavior, but I am not a criminalist or psychologist.
He claimed the sex was fully consensual, but the accusations forced him to drop all of his classes and leave school. I felt sorry for him. He was a very polite guy that I counted as a friend.
My only concern was Michelle’s pregnancy and its implications regarding balancing coursework, which we managed to do, thanks to the classes the university offered to married students.
We spent a lot of time in our dorm studying. We also spent a lot of time after class with our professors. If I was not sure about what we covered in one of my engineering classes, I figured I may as well talk to him after class. Most professors really appreciate students who are very interested in their field. It turned out this was time well spent.
My wife had a 4.0 HPA (Honors Point Average) and I had a 3.6 HPA, a fact she occasionally likes to remind me of. Our professors recommended us for ideal employment positions after graduation, which we accepted. I was working as an electrical engineer, and Michelle, as a high school home economics teacher.
After three years, she got pregnant, I think deliberately, which she denies. But we were ready to begin our family. We ended up with two boys and a girl. The major tragedy in our family was that our youngest son lost control of his tricycle, ended up in the street in front of our house, and was killed by a car. We never got over this. He was such a sweet little boy.
Our pastor warned us that blaming each other for such a tragedy often ends in divorce during one’s worst time in life. I was very careful not to blame her, and if she tried to blame me, I gave her a hug, told her I loved her, and we had two other children to support emotionally and physically.
To help deal with our loss, we adopted a baby girl, which worked out well. After the kids were in school, Michelle went back to teaching full-time. We were also all very active in the local Church of Christ, which was a very important part of our life. We also had a lot of hobbies.
I spent much time rebuilding old cars, six in total. My wife was into knitting, fancy cooking, crochet, reading, and collecting dolls. Our three children all now have children of their own. Fortunately, they were able to live near home, so we spent a lot of time spoiling the grandkids.
We also kept very busy in our senior years. We were enormously proud of our children, grandchildren and our two new great-grandchildren. Postscript: Our parents were discovered by the neighbor in their home several days ago. The coroner ruled they died of natural causes.
Mom died on Monday morning, and Dad died about five hours later. They were both in their 90s and were beginning to have major Alzheimer’s issues, but we wanted to enable them to live in their home as long as possible.
Maybe too long in this case. As Dad said, he could not live without Mom. She never woke up on Monday, and he lay down beside her, dying peacefully with her by his side.