50 Years and Counting...

Editor's Note : The following is an excerpt from the Prologue to a new book project about the experiences that will be encountered during our Golden Year of marriage.

August 28, 1960 was a typical hot and sunny day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, except for the fact that it was our wedding day, which made it special to us. Leading up to the big event was a series of first-time experiences for us both. We were both living in New York City and got married in Puerto Rico only to accommodate the bride’s family. They had returned to the place of their birth a couple of years earlier after building a life and thriving printing business in the Bronx...

In 1960, in our circle at any rate, if you knew anyone who was going to a party of any kind on the island, you were free to tag along. Today, by and large, most levels of Puerto Rican society are more savvy and aware of social morays. Back then, however, 75 close family and friends quickly swelled to 150 “hangers-on,” who expected food and drink. To this day, after attending many weddings and putting on a few, we agree that ours was the worst ever.

Moreover, we found the pickings in wedding gifts very slim by comparison to the experience of our friends who tied the knot in the states. Those friends, primarily three other couples, married just months before us. They are still very much our friends and they are still very much married, which makes us all rare birds. Bits of their own particular wisdom on the subject will be shared later. Collectively we now represent more than 200 years of experience in wedlock.

So while we were not as fortunate as our friends in the collection of wedding gifts, we did share their good fortune in staying power. What within our nature kept us all together? Who knows.The lightness of our satin wedding purse was clearly only a minor setback. It meant that the week-long honeymoon we planned at the lavish La Concha Hotel on the beach on the Condado tourist strip that was just beginning to develop in San Juan would be cut short.

We received the grand sum of $125.00 and four pieces of decorative plastic fruit, the kind you would put in a cut-glass bowl on a dining room table, if you had a cut-glass bowl or a dining room or a table for that matter. That sum, even in 1960 dollars, didn’t buy very much at a luxury hotel. We did have a couple of glorious days at the resort before the ill-wind started to blow. That gale of reality was not only the result of a lack of funds, but an approaching hurricane that drove us back to our family’s home.

The hurricane stood out in our minds, not only as an excuse for our abbreviated honeymoon, but as a catastrophe of epic proportions. The storm was called Donna and to this day it holds the record for the longest duration as a major hurricane with sustained winds of 115 miles per hour.

Donna wound her way across the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispanola, Cuba, The Bahamas and every state on the east coast of the United States over a 17-day period from August 29 to September 14, 1960. She left in her wake $900 million in property damage in 1960 dollars, which would today be the equivalent of $6.6 billion in 2010 dollars. Donna also took 364 lives directly, 107 of which were lost in Puerto Rico, due to flash floods along the east coast, mostly in Humacao. Meanwhile, we were cloistered in Rio Piedras under the mosquito net, oblivious to the devastation that had befallen people beyond our little enclave.

That was the beginning of our first 50 years of marriage. Over that time, we have run into many roadblocks to our plans but always found a way around them or through them to move happily ahead together, raising a family, building businesses and enjoying lasting and valuable relationships.

Building on that experience, we're ready to greet whatever the next 50 years bring us with light-hearts and, maybe just a little, light-headed from all the joy.

That (Isn't) That...