Tell us one of the best days you can remember

There’s a lot to remember. I’ve had a lot of good days.

Graduation from high school. I don’t remember a thing.

Being accepted by Rice University. Highly selective, just 450 students each year. Private. Free to anyone good enough to gain admission. I remember getting the letter of acceptance.

Graduating from college. I didn’t graduate.

Being accepted into medical school. There is much to tell here. Read Three and Out: How Not to Go to College.

Graduating from medical school. Mother bought me a new suit. I recall going to the ceremony but that’s it.

The birth of Anne, our first child. I recall Marianne’s water breaking in our little apartment in Jackson, Mississippi. I, a master of tense situations, didn’t know what to do. I told her to sit on the toilet while I frantically called her obstetrician. I left our little VW, motor running, in the emergency room driveway. I stayed out of the OR for her C-section—I wanted the OB to be thinking of what he was doing, not about me peering over his shoulder. I remember him telling me it was a girl, and a nurse pointing her out as I looked through a big glass window at a roomful of pink little things.

Allen’s birth. Not much other than he was the only pink one in the Parkland Hospital nursery.

Lea’s birth. I don’t remember a thing other than my discussion with postpartum Marianne that I’d decided to leave my first job after only three months. 

My first parachute jump. I recall it in vivid detail. It was a very good day, but not the best. Read Jumping for Joy. It’s also a chapter in my memoir.

My first solo flight as a pilot. A thrill for sure, and a good day, but not the best.

Being elected: President of the Texas Society of Pathologists, and Governor of the College of American Pathologists. Matters of distinction, sure, but not especially memorable as very good days.

Receiving the Caldwell Medal of the Texas Society of Pathologists, the highest professional honor. The family, including Mother and Helen, went to Galveston for a black tie dinner. I gave a speech. I honored Mother by saying “…the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”

Selling my laboratory business. It was an economic home run. A very, very good day. But still…

My first date with Marianne. She was 14, a freshman; I was 16, a high school junior. She came to Sulphur Springs from Kaufman and stayed with her Aunt Mona and Uncle I. T., parents of my best friend Bill. Mona thought I would be the ideal person for Marianne to marry. I took her to the Senior Prom. It was not especially memorable. 

Fast forward through my senior year in high school, three years at Rice, and three years of medical school. 

My second date with Marianne is the best day of my life. 

She was 21. I was 23. She had just graduated from college. I was a rising senior medical student. Marianne’s cousin Bill, my best buddy from high school, was making the rounds introducing his new fiancé. They had been to Kaufman to see Marianne and her family. They came to Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital where I worked as an extern, taking call every third night. They invited me to go to a movie. Take a date, they said. I didn’t have a girlfriend, nor could I think of anyone to call. 

Call Marianne, Bill suggested. They’d just been in Kaufman. She was home. It was only 35 miles away. Here’s the number. Give her a call. She agreed to go. So down to Kaufman I went. 

I don’t remember the drive or pulling into the driveway. Or walking up to the door. I didn’t have to knock. She opened the door.

She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Today I look at pictures of her as she was then and ask myself: How did you get so lucky? But as I learned in our 50 years of marriage, there was more, so much more, to her than good looks and memorable smile, which magnified the effect: modesty, self-possession, and genuineness, rare qualities in someone so blessed with natural beauty.

She graciously invited me in. I felt welcome and relaxed, but I could not take my eyes off of her. She wore a cream-colored shirt-dress of the type then popular with college girls. It had a matching wide fabric belt, short sleeves, a modest neckline, and a full skirt with a huge purple iris painted on it. The outfit was completed by mid-heel peau de soie shoes dyed to match. 

She smiled. It was glorious, a hallmark, and added to the oft-repeated observation that she was immune to age. It was natural, pleasing, welcoming, and genuine, a mark of character and a window into her being. I felt a thrill not equaled since. I could not believe my good fortune. 

We drove back to Dallas, saw a movie with Bill and Becky, and drove her back to Kaufman. All of the other details of that evening are lost to memory but one…

I drove back to Dallas through the rural darkness on a two-lane blacktop, happier than I’d ever been. In a spasm of exuberance, I laid on the horn of the little VW. It was not much of a horn but good enough. I kept at it for miles. In the distance, I saw the yard light of a farmhouse. The front porch light came on as I blared closer. I waved at the man standing at the door, curious about the noise approaching in the darkness, and let off the horn.