REMEMBERING THE SUMMER OF 1964

REMEMBERING THE SUMMER OF 1964

Freedom Summer, they called it, was the summer when a mob of Ku Klux Klansmen murdered three civil rights workers. It was the summer after The Beatles splashed onto the American cultural scene and the summer of the '64 New York World's Fair. It was the summer when Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the summer before Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater.

It was also the summer of the first decade where about nobody in the USA got polio anymore, thanks to the Salk and Sabin vaccines which virtually eliminated the dreaded poliovirus—little consolation to those already crippled by the disease, the ones with atrophied limbs and steel braces.

In the summer of '64, I was twenty years old and looking forward to my junior year in college. As in previous summers, I banged nails and hung sheetrock, working for my uncle Albert's construction company.

I was his favorite nephew, my uncle used to say. Not only did he give me a summer job, but he was also always looking for a "nice Jewish girl" to set me up with—a friend's daughter or niece, a cousin's daughter or niece, a friend of a friend's sister. Well, you get the picture. None of these worked out for one reason or another, and I would even call disaster dates. So, I rolled my eyes one day after work when my uncle said in that big, booming baritone of his: "Barry, have I got a girl for you!"

"Uncle Albert," I said, "no offense, but I think you should call a moratorium on your match-making efforts. Thank you very much."
But he persisted. "Look, I know things didn't work out in the past. But this girl is different."

"Where have I heard that line before?" I said my tone ringing with cynicism.

With a dismissive wave of his meaty hand, he said, "Listen, Barry, this girl is absolutely gorgeous. Remember that beauty in the Dr. Kildare episode last year, the surfer chick with epilepsy?"

"Yvette Milieux?"

"Yeah, that's her. Honestly, she is not particularly striking, but she was close. And she is really smart too, goes to Mount Holyoke."

A Yvette Milieux lookalike at a Seven Sisters school? I did not believe it. With few exceptions, girls who went to Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Smith, Radcliff, et al were known more for their brains than beauty.

And her name, Franny Otten stein, sounded even more divorced from the Milieux image. No girl with the name Franny Otten stein looked like Yvette Milieux. I mean, can you picture a Jewish girl with a name like that standing on the beach with a surfboard? I could not. Now, Kathy Kohler, the original Gidget, was Jewish. She was even cute. But in Yvette Milieux’s league? No way.

Uncle Albert said she was the daughter of one of his building suppliers. He saw her himself when she came into the office with her dad. "She knows about you, Barry," he said. "I built you up. She seemed interested and she is available. So, call her, boychick." When I finally gave in and he gave me her parents' phone number, he said,

"But there is one other thing."

"Yeah, what's that?"

He hesitated. Then: "Oh, nothing. You will find out. It's nothing serious."

Curious, I decided to call her. She had a lovely voice on the phone, soft and polite. We talked for close to an hour, mostly about school, plans for the summer, stuff like that. Like me, she had a summer job, worked in her dad's office taking orders. We grooved over the phone so well that I asked her out, and she accepted. "Well, I guess your uncle told you what I look like," she said toward the end of our conversation.

"Like Yvette Milieux."

She chuckled. "So, I've been told. People are surprised when they find out I am Jewish. You know the old line, 'but you don't look Jewish'."

But is that all he said? About my looks, I mean."

"That's all he said. Why something else I should know?"

"So, he didn't tell you that...I've had polio."

"Oh. No, he didn't," I said, dropping my voice several octaves. Now I knew the 'other thing' that my uncle had mentioned.

"Look, Barry, you can back out of this if you'd like, I won't be offended some guys do when they ask me out on a blind date and I tell them, particularly jock guys like you. Your uncle told me you've been athletic all your life, that you still play lacrosse for your college team."

I debated what I should do. She was right in thinking that an active, sports-oriented guy like me would want a female counterpart for a girlfriend. At the very least, I would want a girl who was healthy in body as well as in mind. Crass as it sounds, cripples need not apply.

But just how crippled was Franny?

"Are you...I mean can you—"

"Walk?"

"I didn't mean—"

"No, it's okay. I get that yes, I can walk. But I do best when hobbling. If hobbling were an Olympic sport, I'd probably win gold." I sat there in silence, dangling the phone in my hand. "That was a joke, Barry."

"Oh, yes, of course," I said, forcing a laugh.

"I have an offbeat sense of humor; in case you haven't noticed. So, do we have a date?"

We had a date. Her seductive phone voice and upbeat, vibrant personality won me over. What? It was one date out of my life. Besides, I did not want to be one of those guys she mentioned who could not deal with someone with a handicap. Truth be told, though, it bothered me.

She lived with her folks in Belmont Estates, an upscale, Jewish post World War Two suburban development of mostly sprawling rangers set on equally sprawling lawns. Professional people lived here— doctors, lawyers, engineers, and people like her dad who had made it in business. They could afford fancy schools like Mount Holyoke. Me, I went to a state university, a decent school but not on the Ivy level.

Blind dates can be innervating, and I was especially nervous about this one, not knowing quite what to expect. I had seen people whose bodies had been ravaged by polio, so my mind raced with scenarios regarding Franny Otten stein. Of course, there was always the possibility that she would not like what she saw either. I was okay looking—slightly above average in height five-foot-ten, brown hair, brown eyes, solid athletic build from wrestling and lacrosse, and the weight training I did over the summer to keep in shape. But I was no matinee idol. So, if my uncle Albert had built me up to the point where she was expecting Rock Hudson or Paul Newman to show up, she would be disappointed.

An attractive, middle-aged woman greeted me at the door. "Hi, you must be Barry. Come in. Franny will be down in a moment."

Her name was Irene, Franny’s mom. She was of average height for a woman and looked surprisingly good for one nearing fifty—trim, with short, light brown hair streaked with gray. David, her dad, a paunchy six-footer with a shock of white hair, came out of the kitchen and greeted me. We sat in the large, tastefully furnished living room, passing the minutes with casual, break-the-ice sort of talk. He talked a little about his business, his connection to my uncle Albert, he asked me about the school, summer plans, the kind of stuff Franny and I had discussed on the phone.

"So, Franny told me you know about her polio," he said. I nodded.

"You know, she's had dates broken because of it, boys who can't tolerate girls with a handicap. Their loss. Of course, I am prejudiced, but she's quite a girl." I nodded again, not knowing what to say. I sure was not going to tell him that I too almost bailed when she told me.

We both looked up at the sound of her making her way down the steps. She leaned slightly over the banister, holding tightly to the railing with both hands, taking the steps one at a time. Her face came into view before anything else. I smiled thinking that this time my good uncle got it right. She possessed the sort of beauty that turned the heads of both men AND women. Her thick, dirty-blond hair dropped below her shoulders, then curled at the ends—hair fine enough to appear in a Breck Shampoo ad She looked more Milieux than Otten stein, which is for sure. So much for stereotypes.

She also wore a yellow summer dress hemmed just above her knees.

As she came near the bottom of the steps, I could see the steel brace over her withered right leg, attached to a heavy brown shoe. Her other leg looked normal, beautifully shaped, what you might expect from a girl with adoring looks. In fact, everything about her looked "normal" except for her right leg. Of course, she did not walk normally.

In fact, she could barely walk at all unless she used her cane, which her mom handed to her when she came off the steps.

"Nice meeting you, Barry," she said, smiling broadly. She looked at me intently, assessing my reaction. I kept my eyes glued to her face, her beautiful, seductive hazel eyes and near flawless skin. She had that clean, scrub look, more akin to someone from Anglo-Saxon stock rather than the

Russian-Jewish ethnicity she later told me was her background. I loved her easy, genuine smile and her voice, the same soft, engaging voice I had heard over the phone.

"Nice meeting you too, Yvette—I mean Franny." She appreciated the humor.

Holding the cane in her left hand, she hobbled (as she told me on the phone) to my car swinging her braced stiff right leg, then leaning on her cane and stepping forward with her normal left leg. Instinctively, I reached out to help her. She frowned and pulled away, conveying by her sour expression that she felt insulted. "I'm perfectly fine," she said. I stepped back, trying not to look hurt, but she noticed it. "Don't feel bad, yours was a natural reaction. I know you mean well, like all those others who do the same thing. But I can get around as well as anyone else, just not as fast."

We both liked Chinese food, so I suggested Jimmy Chang's. Being late June, it was still light out when we got there a little after seven.

Jimmies was starting to get crowded as it normally did on Saturday nights. Between munching on our won ton soup, egg rolls, kung pao chicken, and fried rice, we talked. Typical of first dates, there were minutes of awkward silences. Overall, however, the conversation flowed nicely. Both of us were unsure what we would do with our lives after college graduation. An English major, Franny said she might attend graduate school for a Ph.D. to prepare for a teaching career.

She also saw herself applying to law school. As a psychology major, I had no choice but to enter graduate school if I wanted to make a career of it, and especially if I wanted to keep my student deferment.

Thousands of American "advisors" were already in Vietnam, and it would not be long before LBJ committed ground troops in masse for full-scale combat operations. A student deferment could keep you from getting drafted and thus out of the mess. Neither of us had much to say about the war because we knew so little about it. Few Americans did at that time, unlike years later when the country would be deeply divided. Franny said that much of the activism at Mount Holyoke centered on what students there considered antiquated rules regarding curfews, alcohol use, men in the dorms, that sort of thing.

"So, if I came up for a visit," I said, "you'd have to hide me under your bed if I wanted to stay late."

"Either that or stuff you under the blankets with me on top in case the dorm mother wandered in. Of course, my stuffy, pedantic roommate might give us away. But that's another matter." I made a mental note to look up the word pedantic.

We talked about my hypothetical visit in jest, but I sensed there were serious undertones to it. I liked Franny, and she liked me. And I especially liked looking at her, liked the way she brushed back her radiant hair as she talked, the way she blinked her eyes and moved her lips, thin but sensuous. She made me forget the polio thing; that is until it was time to leave when she grabbed her cane and hobbled out of Jimmy Chang's, down the street, and into my car. I wished it did not bother me, but it did. It was not even nine o'clock. I still didn't know what to do as I started up my red, '63 Ford Fairlane convertible. I could drop her off, chalk it up to experience and never call her again.

Or I could stick it out and see what happened. She seemed to be enjoying herself as much as I. It was refreshing being with a girl on the upside of the bell curve, someone whose intellectual depth went beyond what you would find in mainstream fare such as "Life" and "Look" magazines. She made me laugh with her wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor. And, as noted, she was so beautiful. If not for that brace and her atrophied right leg.

To be continued