About a year before mom died, she and I were sitting in her front room and talking about this and that. Suddenly she said to me “when you left for West Point, I didn’t realize then that you would never return to Ottawa.” The words hit home, and made me a bit sad. Later, I thought back to that departure…

I’d received my appointment to West Point in March of my senior year at OHS. After the initial giddiness of getting accepted passed, the reality of what I signed up for started to sink in. While most of my friends would be partying all summer before going to college in the fall, I would be reporting to West Point at the start of July for Beast Barracks. “Beast” was the Academy’s intense two month introduction to West Point, the Army and the Fourth Class System (Freshmen at West Point are known as Fourth Classmen or Plebes).

After graduation from OHS, my days and nights were spent in a combination of dates with Cathy, partying with Tim and Howard, and the occasional family get together. The time passed quickly. Three weeks till I reported; two weeks; one week; three nights, two nights, and then just one night left. Cathy and I were going on our final date that night.

I’m not sure how we came up with the idea, but that last date was a dinner at her house. Her parents and sisters were going out for the evening, leaving the house to us. Cathy would fix dinner and we were going to just hang out. Interestingly, her parents called mine to see if it was OK for Cathy to serve a bottle of wine at the dinner. My folks agreed. I was 18 and she was 17. The drinking age for beer and wine in Illinois at the time was 19. I try to imagine this happening today, and maybe it would, but I think a lot of parents would be vilified for allowing the wine to be served.

The night of the dinner came and I rode my bike to her house. She greeted me at the door and then opened the wine. It was an Italian straw basket Chianti and we had a glass. For dinner, she made spaghetti with homemade meat sauce and a salad. I’m sure there was a dessert as well, but neither of us can remember what it was. It was a bittersweet night, as farewells often are. In some ways, it was almost like we were play acting as adults. I suppose our excuse was that we were young, and in love in that high school way. We promised to write, and said we’d see each other soon. The date finally ended, we said our goodbyes and had our farewell kiss.

The next day, mom, dad and I were leaving mid morning for the drive to New York. Howard stopped by for a final farewell. We joked about resuming the party times when I came back at Christmas. When Howard was about to leave, Cathy surprised me and rode up on her bike. We went off to the side and talked a bit more. As we hugged goodbye, she pressed a letter in my hand, and made me promise not to read it until after I left.

And then it was time. Mom, dad and I got in the car and left Ottawa. I think I waited about an hour before opening the letter from Cathy. I probably read it about 50 times on the drive to West Point.

I started Beast two days later and my West Point and Army journey began.

I made it home for Christmas break that year and saw family, friends and Cathy. Mom was right though. I’d left Ottawa for good, although I didn’t know it yet. For the next 45 plus years, Cathy and I would make it back for vacations, or different family milestones. To this day, we still return to Ottawa on trips, but never did return to live there. We both love Ottawa and it was a great place to grow up, but you can’t go back.

In the book Shadows in Paradise, the author Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front) said it much more eloquently than I ever could:

“But I also knew that there was no going back. One can never go back; nothing and no one is ever the same. All that remains is an occasional evening of sadness. The sadness that we all feel because everything passes and man is the only animal who knows it.”

Addendum:

⁃ I carried the letter from Cathy with me when I checked in to the Academy, and it was in my desk for the entire time at West Point. Today, all these years later, I still have it in a drawer next to our bed. I won’t tell you the contents, but the letter is special to me and I still read it occasionally.

⁃ In the, “it doesn’t really matter, but something else I still remember category”, besides reading Cathy’s letter on the drive to West Point, I also read the book, The Boys of Summer. The book, by Roger Kahn, was written in 1972 and tells the history of the Brooklyn Dodgers up to their victory in the 1955 World Series. I got in trouble from mom for reading the whole way out, instead of looking at the beautiful scenery we were going through when we hit the Appalachian Mountains. I should point out that I still have my copy of that book as well. ;-).