(This is part of a series showing Synchronicity in my life)

First Wife Introduced by Singing Buddy in Louisiana

The State of Louisiana provided a lot of synchronicities. I was stationed there as a second lieutenant when a fellow I had sang with on television – Carl Disler – had just left the Vietnam War and was stationed in my same army base at Fort Polk, La, where I served as a training officer.

We had sung together as a Doo Wop group – the Five Jaunts – and somehow ended up getting drafted on the same day – June 3rd, 1968. We both took a tab of LSD the night before our induction into the army and were surprised as all hell when our friends gave us a going-away party with both of us high as kites.

     Carl started dating a young woman he had met who worked at a nearby newspaper. She soon introduced me to her fellow worker with whom I began to date. She was a Cajun girl by the name of Ella Gore, whom I married when Carl and I drove the ladies up north and both of us got married. That was about a month before I went to jump school and then to the Vietnam War.

Met Second Wife Thru Soon-To-Be Lawyer Charlie Brown

     Synchronicity also took place with my second marriage when Charlie Brown, the guy who influenced me into going to law school, had introduced me to Wendy Wright. She had worked at the Times Picayune Newspaper in the town of New Orleans, located in, of all places Louisiana.

Charlie Brown and I worked at the Temple University collage newspaper. We would “put the paper to bed” which means finishing the final preparation of a publication before it went to print. And then we’d sneak into the dark room where photographs were developed and smoke some marijuana.

Both of us later became Vietnam War veterans and then practicing attorneys. He served as a clerk in the war and then later became a prosecutor on the West Coast.

Some Major Events Came Through Newspapers

     I realized while I was writing this section that newspapers had a great influence on my life. My first wife worked in the advertising and/or sales section of a newspaper. My second wife served as a copy editor at not only the Louisiana newspaper but the Philadelphia ones which included the Evening Bulletin, the Inquirer and the Daily News.

Becoming a newspaper reporter was something I never inteneded to do until I returned from the Vietnam War and was visting my parents. My mother had signed me up for a community college and one of their neighbors – an elderly fellow with a strong Scottish accent – asked me what I was going to major in at school.

“I don’t no,” I said having never considered it before. He then asked me what I studied in high school, a trade school “Printing,” I said. “Well, laddie, you ought to study jounalism,” he said with the brougue. “Their both the same.”

They are not the same, but that’s exactly what I did getting an Associates Degree from the Delaware County Community College and then a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from Temple University in Philadelphia. I was editor of the school newspaper at the Delco school and then served as a reporter at the Temple college newspaper. I got a Master’s Degree in history and wrote about the founding of Pottstown, PA, for the Pottstown Mercury Newspaper and got hired as a reporter whose work was once nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.