Burdette Lamar and Cheryl (Brown) Peters ('61)

Last updated: July 1, 2006

	We fell in love while dancing to a Johnny Mathis tune. A lot of us did in those days. We think it was "Chances Are." We'd known each other for a year or more by then, but never paid any real attention. All unsuspecting, we got hit by the Thunderbolt. That was the summer of 1960. I had already graduated from HHS and was working at Kwik Chek. Cheryl had just finished her junior year. We went together for two years. In her senior year Cheryl was president of Honoria, active in GAA, and an honor student. That same year I bagged groceries. The next year she went to the freshman honors program at UF in Gainesville and I to Stetson in DeLand. After one semester I flunked out: back to Kwik Chek. I wasn't doing anyone any good, so I enlisted into the Army. I kissed her goodbye at the Miami train station on August 13, 1962.
"We'll always have email,"I said. Big mistake. I was wrong. It would be twenty-five years before email was invented. She transferred to Stetson and went on to graduate with honors, win an NDEA fellowship, and troop off, two weeks before I got back, to graduate school at Kentucky. We each did graduate degrees, marriages, children, careers, divorces. But I never forgot. Something in me wouldn't let me forget. Long decades later, I found myself thinking of her more and more. By that time, email had been invented. But I didn't know where she was. The web, though. Yes the web, too, had been invented. I searched, and, late at night on December 3, 1996,... ...
	I found this image, and an email address. Lucky for me, too, because without the image, I wouldn't have known for sure that any particular Cheryl Peters (I knew her married name) was the Cheryl Peters I was looking for. And if I hadn't had the email address, I probably wouldn't have written a letter, and certainly wouldn't have telephoned.I sent email that very night: Subject: hello from a distant admirer Hi Cheryl, I saw your web page [Assistant Dean for Instruction page, Houston Community College site]. You look terrific! What a smashing picture! ...
	I had no recent picture to send her, so I had this one made. "One good photo," I told the photographer. I'd chosen a woman photographer, because a woman understands things. I wanted her to understand that I didn't need a lot of acceptable poses -- just one good photo. She had this one ready for Valentine's day, 1997.
	After a few months we began visiting. This photo-booth montage was taken at a festival in Houston during my second visit, in June 1997. In all, we had four one-week visits -- twice her coming to me in New England, twice my going to her in Houston -- besides my brief trips for job interviews. These were our first times together in 35 years. By August 1997, I had found a job in Houston and relocated there.
Here we are in April 1998 at the Japanese Garden in Houston's Hermann Park, just after Cheryl's older son was married there.
	Here we are at Thanksgiving 1998, visiting in Florida at the home of my sister and her husband. Wedding Date: April 17, 1999 HHS60 40th Reunion: June 2000 We'll Be There!!!
Here's the wonderful drawing that I've used for background here. It's from Hialeah High School's web site!