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| Ted and Marcia Everingham – 60 years of marriage and love |
| On Life and Love After 50 eNewsletter – December 23, 2021 by Columnist Tom Blake I’ve often said, and I truly believe, that our Champs are incredible people: Warm, friendly, observant, caring, sharing, giving, and helpful. On this day before Christmas Eve. 2021, I decided to share with you a poem I received this week from my high school classmate Ted Everingham—who is a Champ and a friend. It captures the warmth of Christmas, love and 60-years of happy marriage. So, the total credit of today’s eNewsletter message goes to Ted and Marcia Everingham, of Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. A CHRISTMAS MEMORY by Ted Everingham: “My Christmas Eve was cold and snowy in 1960. It was a Saturday evening, and I was working at the local radio station in Albion, Michigan, reading top-of-the-hour newscasts and running the control board for Late Date, a popular weekly radio show targeting teenage listeners. “The program ran from 10:00 p.m. until midnight. The show’s host – a senior at the high school in nearby Marshall – chose to close her program that Christmas Eve with a bit of verse. It didn’t rise to the dignity of a ‘poem,’ but it expressed in rhyme an important idea in simple, homespun language appropriate to the time and place. “I heard the first line or two through my headset, and then for a reason that I have forgotten (if I ever knew), I turned to look at the host through the glass that separated the control room from the studio where she sat. I discovered, to my surprise, that she was not reading the verse but reciting it from memory, and she was speaking directly to me through that glass. “Here is Marcia’s Christmas wish to me that long-ago evening: ‘If I could do whatever I want to do, To make complete your gladsome Christmas Day I would not bring a single thing to you, But I would come and take some things away: I’d take away all trouble from your heart, Each pain and sorrow I would have relieved, And every pain that caused a single smart, And every hour through which you sorely grieved. I’d have them all be gone — forever gone – Forgotten, like the things that cannot be, And then each hour would be a joyful one, For only good things would be left you see.’” Ted said, “Eight months later, the host and I were married, and the rest (60 years) is history.”Merry Christmas! Ted & Marcia Everingham, Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. Thanks, Champs, enjoy your Christmas. Be safe. We will send out the final column of 2021 on New Year’s Eve. Merry Christmas Champs! |
On Life and Love after 50 