Well, it’s a classic Jewish blind date. 1972. My mother’s friend says she has a friend that knows a nice Jewish boy that’s going to MIT. My number goes to his mother to Mark who at that time in his life is eager to follow up for any date. I wasn’t keen on blind dates, in fact had never been on one. He shows up with wire rim glasses, long hair (for the time), corduroy jacket, paisley tie.

I made sure to have my friend Marilyn there to check things over and we both just looked at each other. I was 19, at home from UMass on a break from my sophomore year. Well, I wasn’t immediately smitten but we dated through the summer as I had nothing better to do. In the fall I left for England to do my student teaching. We wrote on those crazy thin airmail letters, as there were no phone or computer alternatives if you recall. Well, absence does make the heart grow fonder. By the time I got back in December we were very eager to see each other.

He met me at the airport with flowers when you could actually come to the gate. We continued to date throughout the remaining of my combined junior/senior year and by this time we were very serious. Then we both graduated in June of 1973 and had some decisions to make. Mark had accepted a job from HP in California. My parents were very wary of me taking off with some guy to California without some kind of commitment. So very unromantically, we got engaged over the phone. Both sides of the family were thrilled. We camped across Canada in Mark’s Pontiac Ventura to save some of the relocation money from HP and arrived in California in July. We found an apartment for $200/month in Santa Clara and both started working.

As it turns out, in the Sephardic community in the Peabody, Massachusetts area, everyone is a "relative", no matter if they are Turkish, Spanish, Puerto Rican, Greek or whatever. Roberta's boss's wife was a member of that community and said that I should call Roberta.  And, yes, I was eager to go out with anyone. In my 4th year at MIT, living in Newton, and working as an engineer part time in Concord, MA at General Radio, I did not have much time to look around.  As for how I looked on our first date, I had not had a real haircut since Thanksgiving, 4 years earlier.

I was very interested in Roberta and was quite glad (and surprised) that she said yes to a second and third and more dates. While she was in England, I did stop by her house a few times and felt welcomed by her mother and father; I wasn't sure about her brothers. Upon her return, I was there at the gate with a dozen roses instead of the bouquet of daisies that her mother had brought.

I only interviewed with companies near the east and west coasts, as I did not want to live far from an ocean. After first interviewing with HP on campus and then in California in February, I was made an offer in March. I wanted to accept the job and have Roberta come with me, but did not know if she would or not. When she said yes, I accepted the job and I thought we were headed West. However, there were three issues: Roberta was not engaged, she did not have a job, and she did not have a place to stay.  Somehow getting engaged solved all three problems, with us announcing the engagement at their family Passover seder.  Then Aunt Syl decided that Roberta needed a ring, which we did not think we needed, given my financial situation: no savings, just student loans.  However, Aunt Syl had a connection for a great deal and that is the diamond that Roberta still has.

The drive was great, driving from Lynnfield to Montreal to Vancouver to Davis, especially with Roberta sort of learning to drive a 3-on-the-column stick shift which kept popping out of 2nd gear.

Our plan was to go back to Massachusetts the next summer and get married. In July, we got a call from my parents. This being 1973, and me being the oldest daughter, they were very concerned that I was living with someone out of wedlock. So they said, I think you should move out or get married. Just so happened we had some fraternity brothers of Mark’s in town. Harvey and Robin were facing a similar problem with their parents (I know, remember it’s 1973). They were supposed to move into an apartment together in the fall, but their wedding wasn’t scheduled until November. Two other couples that were college roommates were also visiting at the time. So Harvey’s brother-in-law knew a judge in San Francisco that could marry us.

Quick, what do we need, a license, blood tests? On Thursday, we called my parents and told them we were getting married. I asked work for Friday off. It was a short engagement. On Friday, August 3, 1973 Judge Karesh (a former rabbi as it turns out), married Harvey and Robin and Mark and I in his chamber at San Francisco Civic Center. I wore my senior prom dress. We spend Friday night in Tiburon in the honeymoon suite. After all, we needed to be back on Saturday for our friends wedding who had been planning it for a year. So I call that our elopement. We went back to Boston and were married in a Jewish ceremony on our anniversary a year later, August 3, 1974 with the family rabbi and the immediate family.

I had thought that we were planning to get  married before we had kids; however, I was up for something small and unplanned. I really did not like the idea of a major wedding event, with all of the traditional stuff.

It was during a Sunday dinner with Harvey and Robin at his sister's place in Orinda that his brother-in-law suggested the four of us getting married on Friday, 5 days later. 

On the evening before  the wedding, during our  calls to the parents, her father's said: "If you had told us sooner, we would have come." Since my parents and grandmother could not afford to travel, it was just going to be the eleven of us there: the two marrying couples, my two other former roommates and their wives (Tom/Sue, Chuck/Jan), Harvey's sister and brother-in-law (Alice/Gary) and Judge Karash. By the way, after announcing the wedding during the phone call, Roberta's mother said that they would buy our new bedroom set for us, to which I was sure that I heard my future father-in-law gulp.

It was fun at our friends' wedding to respond to the question, "So what's new?" with the reply, "Oh, we were married Friday."  

As for our 2nd wedding, Rabbi Geller was and still is a wonderful family friend, as well as Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Ahavath Achim in Gloucester.

We had 2 perfect weddings, with no regrets about either and only wonderful memories of everything around them.