Stanley B. Graham - A Farewell to Three Wives: The Marriages of Rick Stevens

Books by STANLEY B. GRAHAM

COUNTRY ZOO:
The Perils of a First-Year Teacher (a novel)

MEDITATIONS OF A GREAT LAKES SAILOR, (a novel)

PORTRAIT OF A LADY:
The Biography of Elizabeth Ramirez Graham.

THE NEXT TRAIN TO CHICAGO:
The Story of the Life and Loves of a Century Woman (a novel)

I WAS HERE:
The Young Manhood and Education of Rick Stevens (a novel)

TO BECOME A RICH AMERICAN (a novel)

THE CIVIL WAR DIARY OF LOUIS M. ALBRIGHT

A FAREWELL TO THREE WIVES:
The Marriages of Rick Stevens (a novel)

Information about these books is available at the following web site:
www.beldingpublishing.com

A FAREWELL
TO THREE WIVES

The Marriages of Rick Stevens

A NOVEL By

STANLEY B. GRAHAM

AuthorHouse LLC

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: 1-800-839-8640

2014 Stanley B. Graham. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/25/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-5283-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-5282-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014900627

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,
and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Dedicated to the memories of:

Kert Von Fieandt (1927-1962)

Cynthia Ann Davis-Graham (1933-1991)

Elizabeth Betty Menges Ramirez-Graham (1920-2009)

Ida L. Belding Graham-Appleby (1896-1989)

Martha Maxwell Davis (1901-2001)

FOR

Jeff and Kim, their children and descendants

Doug and Kim, their children and descendants

Artie and Linda, their children, and descendants

Bill and Bess, their children and descendants

Lili, her children and descendants

RICK

RICK STEVENS, 34, SHOULD HAVE been, on this 16 th day of August, 1962, the happiest man in the world. But secretly he was not . He was ashamed of himself for having misgivings. It was true that he could put on a good act and pretend that he was happy, and he did this for the sake of his mother and his wife Kert.

He had spent most of this day in either the delivery room or the waiting room of White Memorial Hospital in Salem on the Lake, Ohio. In the delivery room, garbed in a long white coat, he held his wifes hand and gave her light kisses on the cheek. He tried to console her while she was having excruciating labor pains. When she dozed he returned to the waiting room.

In the waiting room he sat on a red vinyl lounge chair and nervously read Tender Is The Night, a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald This was where he was when, twelve hours after he brought her to the hospital, he heard a babys cry from the direction of the delivery room.

He stood up, trembled, and rushed toward the sound. Opening the door, he saw the doctor holding the baby upside down and then hand it to a nurse.

The doctor said, Give us ten minutes or more to clean up your baby girl.

Rick was still trembling and breathless. What could he say?

He went quickly to his wifes side and kissed her. She said, Darling, did you hear what the doctor said? Its a girl. Im so happy.

Beforehand, he and Kert had decided that if it was a girl, they would call her Debra or Debby. If it was a boy they would call him Douglas or Doug.

Its Baby Debbie. I cant wait to see her.

In a little while the nurse, a middle-age woman clad in a white uniform and cap, brought in the new baby and laid her in Kerts arms. Kert exclaimed, Oh, Rick, darling, Im so happy. My own sweet little girl. Call your mother and aunt.

First, I want to take pictures, Rick said. He walked quickly to the waiting room and got his 35 mm camera from of his overcoat. The nurse took three pictures of the new parents and their new baby in his wifes arms.

Then Rick went to a pay phone next to the waiting room and telephoned his mother and aunt. They were overjoyed and his mother Ida said that she and her sister Troya would walk the short distance to the hospital to see the baby.

-

Everything had happened so fast. Rick was trimming forsythia bushes in the backyard of their little stone cottage on the southern bank of Lake Erie when Kert opened the back screen door and screamed, Rick, Rick, come here right now!

Kert pointed to the kitchen floor where there was a puddle of fluid. My water broke, Kert said.

Rick ran upstairs and got the suitcase that Kert and he had packed ahead of time. He helped Kert into the passenger seat in his car and drove to White Memorial Hospital, a Victorian mansion that the wealthy White family had bequeathed to the town of Salem on the Lake.

-

This day had been extremely hot, in the mid-eighties, and Rick was still clad in the khaki shorts and red T-shirt that he had been wearing that morning when his wife screamed for help. Rick was a slender handsome man in his early thirties with a full head of medium brown hair. He did not laugh too much and when he smiled it was a crooked or wry grin, hardly opening his lips.

He was thoroughly enjoying his summer vacation from his teaching position at Kings Park High School, a small high school where he was the science teacher. Altogether there were about 300 students and 10 teachers. Rick as well as all the teachers had heavy schedules and large classes. Ricks subjects included physics, chemistry and general science. Once he even had to teach a geography class. He often felt he was, as he phrased it, spreading himself too thin. He needed to know more and spent much of his free time, what little he had except during the summers, looking up topics in his encyclopedias.

In addition, he had spent the previous summer, 1961, studying physics at the University of Vermont. He was one of the fifty participants in the NSF Summer Physics Institute. He along with the other science teachers were being paid by the National Science Foundation to study and learn much more about the subjects they were teaching. Make our teachers smarter so that we can keep up with Russia was the basic reason for the numerous summer institutes for science and math teachers. Rick was a diligent and conscientious student and maintained a 90% average in all the weekly tests.

-

After making the telephone call to his mother and Aunt Troya, he flopped down on the red lounge chair and waited for them.

Upon their entering, Rick noted that both women were attired in lightweight colorful summer dresses. Ricks mother Ida, despite her age of sixty six, looked much younger; she had medium brown hair and an unwrinkled face; and her sister Troya, age sixty, looked younger; she had a few gray hairs and also an unwrinkled face. They kept active and Ida, a widow of the late Judge Appleby, had recently married a man who had proposed marriage to her thirty-two years ago [There is a story about their relationship in the previous novel To Become a Rich American. ]

When they saw the new baby and Kert, they expressed their congratulations and, as Rick phrased it, raved: How sweet! How darling! How adorable!

His Aunt Troya asked How much does she weigh?

Eight pounds, four ounces.

Oh, a big baby for a girl! Rick knew it was not a premature birth.