Life Gone Full Circle

I am always amazed when life goes full circle. In my Youngstown Eats blog, I wrote that I had had contact with a gentleman named Howard from California who was originally from Youngstown. He said he was a graduate of YSU, and was putting together a reunion for his ZBT fraternity. On his web page, he was posting pictures of old restaurants and was wondering if I could get him one for the old 20th Century Restaurant on Belmont Avenue. He and I talked quite a bit, and I was successful in procuring him photographs with the help of a friend of mine.

In conjunction with my trip down memory lane with Howard, I wrote a blog about old Youngstown restaurants which turned into one of the more popular things I had written. Get into the Wayback Machine with me and travel back to the mid 1960’s. My cousin Debbie, who was two years older than me, married a guy named Bob Turner when they were very young. Bob was a nice enough guy, and there was a big wedding on the way to happily ever after. Unfortunately, the train got derailed very early on. They had moved to Williamsburg where Bob was attending William and Mary Law School after an illustrious career at Youngstown State University where he was extremely active in student government. One day, according to my cousin Debbie, Bob walked into their apartment and announced that he didn’t want to be married anymore and took off.

I never really knew whether the story was true. I know that my Uncle and Bob had a serious confrontation when Bob showed up at my Uncle’s house to pick up some personal belongings. I was told that Bob then left the area, never to be heard from again. I was told nobody knew where Bob went, or what had happened to him. By then, I was attending Ohio State University.

On the day the divorce was final, I asked Debbie to visit me in Columbus to help her feel better. School was over and I thought it might be a good idea to fix her up with someone for a fun night out. All of my friends had left for the summer, so I fixed her up with Jim, who was at the bottom of my fix up list. As luck would have it, they hit it off, and Debbie and Jim were married within a year. Debbie had five kids with Jim, who was a professional man.

But there was trouble in Mudville. I never got the full story, but apparently there was a lot of violence in the marriage and abuse directed toward my cousin from various members of her family. After the kids were grown, a nasty divorce of the worst kind ensued. Unfortunately, in the middle of all of the mess, my cousin contracted bladder cancer, a very deadly strain. She successfully fought it for years. Two or three years after the divorce, she married her neighbor Joe. He was, and is, a really nice guy. But the cancer returned with a vengeance, and she died two years after marrying Joe. Her mother and my mother and our other aunt also died within a year of Debbie’s death. Joe is now taking care of her 97 year old father.

My Youngstown restaurant blog generated a lot of emails. I opened one the other day from Kansas City. It said “Mark, I just found your blog. I am from Youngstown and was active in YSU politics. My campaign manager was a man named Howard. It has to be the same guy…could you please tell me how to contact him?” Signed – Bob Turner. I was shocked. He addressed his email to Mark, but all emails I get usually are addressed to Mark because of the name of the website. But my last name does not appear anywhere and he wouldn’t know who I was. To make sure it was him, I Googled him and found a picture. It had to be him…a little older…but still had that sandy hair and fair complexion. I emailed back giving him Howard’s telephone number (with Howard’s permission, of course) and then I said “Are you who I think you are? Were you married to my cousin Debbie in the late 1960’s?”

I got a response from Bob a few days later. The contents were personal. I am glad he saw fit to answer my question, and tell me some things. Given that I introduced Debbie to her second husband, I have always felt somewhat responsible for the horrible outcome of the second marriage, and the indignities suffered by my cousin. On the other hand, third time's a charm and her third husband and I have become good friends, and I am thankful for the wonderful job he is doing taking care of my Uncle.

Over the last several years, I have come across several people under various circumstances whom I knew when I was younger. Facebook has been great in re-establishing contacts with people, especially my old high school friends. But I have also had many encounters that seem to have closed old unfinished chapters in my life. I have lost relatives to death, and re-established contact with one’s I haven’t seen in years by sheer coincidence. That has been a blessing. Life always has a way of coming around full circle. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I guess it depends.