-Source-The Sweet Science-
It was the most tumultuous year in one of the most tumultuous decades in American history. For those of a certain age, 1968 was a year unlike any other, a time of national angst and change. The country was roiled by the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; the Tet Offensive unexpectedly launched by North Vietnamese forces and the Viet Cong raised the stakes in the seemingly endless Vietnam war; there were violent clashes between antiwar protestors and Chicago police at the Democratic National Convention, and tensions ran high after a North Korea gunboat captured the adrift Navy intelligence vessel USS Pueblo in international waters and 83 crew members were held as hostages before their release was negotiated.
What happened in the sports world that year in no small part reflected what was happening in society on a broader scale: 200-meter American sprint medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos bowed their heads and raised black-gloved fists on the medal stand during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner at the Mexico City Olympics, and Arthur Ashe became the first black man to win a Grand Slam tennis tournament when he beat Tom Okker at the U.S. Open. In boxing, a power-punching kid from Houston, George Foreman, presaged his two widely separated rises to world professional championships by winning the heavyweight gold medal in Mexico City, and the leaner but just as hard-hitting Bob Foster won the light heavyweight title by knocking out Dick Tiger, the only time in Tiger’s 77-bout pro career in which he lost inside the distance.
For a not-quite-21-year-old Marine reservist and his 19-year-old bride, however, all those events took a back seat to something that occurred on Aug. 24 in New Orleans, and was of no particular significance to anyone other than the newly married couple and a selection of their friends and relatives. That was the day when my life forever changed for the better when I took Anne Marie d’Aquin as my soulmate, future mother of our four children and cooler-headed adviser on any number of critical domestic issues.
Now that we have reached the occasion of our golden anniversary – and 53½ years together, if you consider the formative stages of a relationship that began with a blind date of teenagers on Feb. 12, 1965 – I think it is high time to publicly acknowledge what those who know us well have known all along. Were it not for my Annie, I would be poorer and less fulfilled in every conceivable way. What’s that saying about certain sports teams? Oh, yeah, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And so it is with me; I am better, and probably much more so, as part of “us” than I could ever be as just me, a truth that likely would not be so had not I had the incredible good fortune to find a partner who meshed with me as no one else ever could, or probably would even dare to try. Read more