Vinci and I met on Easter Sunday, 1942. That afternoon I went to visit my good friend, Bill Ewald, and it wasn't until we talked for awhile that he told me he had a date with Ruth Burdick.

Ruth told Vinci, after talking with Bill on the phone, that he was bringing a friend. Vinci, being cold to the idea of a blind date, tried to bow out but eventually was talked into staying.

When we walked in Ruth's home, I saw this drop dead gorgeous creature wearing a hat, and I hoped she was my date and not Bill's. Vinci told me much later she went home that evening and told her mother she had met the man she was going to marry.

We dated frequently, but it wasn't long before my work took me to Springfield, Illinois. I had been working at a defense plant in Ankeny, Iowa, but the new job would also be at a defense plant between Springfield and Decatur.

About the same time I left Des Moines for Springfield, Vinci told me she had auditioned for a job in the chorus line at Little Jackie Heller's Yacht Club in Pittsburgh, PA and was given a contract.

So in mid-1942 she too left Des Moines. Although she and her good friend Dorris Browner had been given contracts at the Club, Vinci became friends with Dee Turnell and her sister Genoveave, and shared an apartment with them.

When that contract was completed, Vinci and Dee went to the Club Royale in Detroit, MI to dance as The Royalettes, and were roommates there as well. It was there I visited Vinci in October, 1942 after quitting my job to enlist in the Air Corps.

The next time I visited with Vinci was after my basic training and completion of B-17 school, and this time it was Chicago, since she was dancing as one of the Chez Paree Adorables. I had it on good authority that the chorus line at the Chez was second only to the Rockettes of Radio City, Rockefeller Center, New York.

She was really peeved at me then, because the only way I could have made the trip was to accompany the father of a girl I had gone with before meeting Vinci. He was making the trip because his daughter was there for some reason I don't remember. So I was given the cold shoulder big time, not only by Vinci, but from all her roommates -- also of the Chez Paree chorus. I did manage to salvage a breakfast date with her before I had to return. She thought I was trying to "burn the candle at both ends," and it certainly wasn't very smart of me to think I could get away with it.

I smothered her with letters of apology after that fiasco, and had it smoothed over before my next leave -- the last one before I left for overseas duty. The trip to Chicago, as difficult as it turned out to be, made me realize I was in love with Vinci.

Our V-mails were numerous during the next 18 months, and plans were made during my time in China for our wedding on my return. So she was right in what she told her mother on Easter Sunday in 1942.

As of this writing, we have been married 57 years and still in love. I hope it goes on for many more.

I love you, Vinci.

Copyright 2001, H. Thomas Flanagan