Page 167 - People & Places In Time

Interior Dimensions
“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”
Winston Churchill
O pportunity comes to us under many guise, small opportunities can be as fleeting as the butterfly that lands on our shoulder the moment remem- bered but gone at a glance. Other times, there can happen a chance meeting
of eyes that becomes the start of a love affair cherished throughout a lifetime. There are the opportunities expected through our own diligent effort and those placed before us by others, unexpected perhaps, even catching us off-guard. In any case an opportunity is grasped, or it’s gone. Elusive by definition the cir- cumstances that create possibility never sit idly in wait. The choices we make of these opportunities, when encountered, will soon enough form a life that when looked at in a rear-view mirror will be recognized as our own . . . a reflection of those decisions that have made us who we’ve become. The choices presented, at times fleeting, may also conceal a complexity of consequences, that at first encounter have remained discrete, often unforeseeable at first approach. Of course, there is also the likely possibility, that we simply choose to ignore the obvious, when desires toss caution to the wind and override any thought of restraint. Our response in consequence can affect our lives so completely, that a chance opportunity and haste decision will become inseparable from any future pursuits.
D uring the summer of 1970, Holly Pagel entered my life while we were both in summer school at Fresno State University. One morning while sit- ting with friends downstairs at the student union patio, I watched a tall, shapely and attractive nineteen-year-old women long brunette hair down her back, wearing a short blue and white sun dress walk up the stairs with a girlfriend. I didn’t know Holly at the time, this being her first class’ since transferring from Fresno City College. I watched, then commented to my friends that I had just seen the girl I’m going to marry. As it happened, we were together in the same psychology class that summer.
We were married at the Methodist church in Fresno on July 10, 1972. A sequence of events had begun, and my life remains securely in the grasp of choices made nearly fifty years in my past.
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Steps at Fresno State leading dowm to the student union patio
Saint Pauls Methodist Church in Fresno where Me and Holly were married in July of 1972.