Like most fathers, Mike Abbott imparted sayings to his children he hoped would stick in their minds as they found their way through life. His went something like this: “What is taken away once is given back twice.”
Gloria MacArthur met Frederick VanDuyne on a blind date in 1954. “I was attending Connecticut College for Women, and a friend of mine was headed to New York City one night to meet her boyfriend from Cornell Medical School, which is located there,” Gloria explained, “so I went with her.” For his part, Erick remembers a friend of his calling down the dormitory hall, asking who wanted to go on a blind date that night. “I popped my head out of my room and said ‘I do,’” he smiled. The college was holding a dance on the roof of the dorm that evening, and the foursome attended together. “I remember I called my mother that night and told her I’d found the boy I was going to marry,” Gloria reminisced. A year later, Erick proposed and Gloria accepted.
Lewis was born in Georgia and raised in Washington D.C. He attended a black college in Alabama – the Tuskegee Institute as it was then known. Upon graduation, Lewis was hired by the Institute as a printer in the school’s graphic arts department. It was during this time that he met MLK, who lived in Montgomery, Alabama (about 40 miles away). Back before he got his doctorate and became the leader of the civil rights movement, MLK was a preacher. He used to come to Tuskegee every Tuesday evening to speak at different churches. Lewis printed the literature needed for his speaking engagements, and the men shared the common bond of being Alpha Phi fraternity brothers. “Being a fraternity brother, I got to know him pretty good,” Lewis remembers, “and I remember his energy. People were just energized by him.” As the head of the printing department at the time, Lewis made copies of MLK’s speeches for his Tuesday night visits. “At that time, MLK was not the icon he is today; he was just a preacher,” Lewis remembers. But even then, Lewis says he knew this man was something special.
December, 1941: Louise Bernhardt (now Kinsman) lived in a cottage approximately 50 feet from Battleship Row, Pearl Harbor, HI. She was the daughter of Chief Petty Officer F.D. Bernhardt, Leading Chief of Operations at Ford Island and on December 7, she was eyewitness to the day which will forever live in infamy. Today, 73 years later, Louise still remembers it clearly.
