In July of 1967 I was seventeen years old and had just graduated from high school.
During that summer, my brother Fred was a counselor at Camp Illinek, our local Boy Scout venue. Thursday night was family night at camp, and I would sometimes tag along with my parents to see Fred and also to get an eyeful of the other counselors who I had noticed were pretty cute.
As a result of these visits, my brother and I struck a deal. I would sew him a corduroy sports jacket, (after all, I had won the Betty Crocker award at my high school), and he would get me a date with one of his friends. It took longer than expected, as he first had to cull the lot. Roger was too nerdy and Butch was temporarily missing both front teeth, and also had a reputation for taking girls into the bushes. Todd, however, seemed just right. After all, his father was a minister. And so it was that
Todd Bischoff made the acquaintance of
Pamela Zarf one hot July evening.
According to plan, (mine), Todd called and invited me to a movie the next week. The only problem was that Todd didn't have a car, and it was a long way from camp to my house. He decided to hitch a ride with some of the other guys who were coming into town for the evening, and arranged for them to pick me up, drop us off at the movie theater, and then pick us up again on their way home. Theoretically sound, this plan did not take my father into account. There was never a stricter father than my dad. When boys came to pick me up, he typically said very little, but the muscle in his jaw worked overtime as he sized them up, looked them over, and showed them out while admonishing them to be safe, drive carefully and have me home early. I was weak in the knees just thinking about first of all, asking my father if I could go out with Todd, and second, telling him that there would be five boys in the car that picked me up! And yes, at seventeen, I still had to ask my father's permission to go on a date! I guess fate must have been on our side, because Todd and I did get together that night.
A month later we both went away to school 500 hundred miles apart. For three years we saw each other infrequently, but we wrote almost every day. Back then we didn't have the internet and phone calls were prohibitively expensive, but in those letters that passed each other traveling from Jacksonville, Illinois, to Louisville, Kentucky, we shared our thoughts, dreams, hopes, and plans and got to know each other better than most people ever do. When Todd finished school, I still had two years of college left to complete.
Undaunted, he proposed and against my parents' wishes I accepted. A year later, Todd's dad married us in a tiny white church in rural Illinois. I was twenty and Todd had been twenty-one for just a week. The last of my savings had been spent on my wedding gown and Todd had fifty dollars to his name, but we didn't care. We moved to Chicago where Todd saw to it that I finished my education while he worked.
We have had our share of hardships and disappointments, but along the way we had three wonderful children who are all happily married now.
True to form, Todd served as a scoutmaster for many years, and scouting activities became an integral part of our family life. This June we will celebrate thirty eight years of marriage, and Todd is still my valentine.