Just Two Kids from the Bronx

Dick and Mary met in the summer of 1958. They were introduced to each other by a mutual friend, Suzanne, on the corner of 172nd Street and Ogden Avenue. Dick was on his way to see his present girlfriend at the time. A year later, early summer 1959, at the same corner, he met Mary once again. This time, Dick was on his way home for his 5:00 p.m. dinner with his family.

Mary said, “I have to go home too.”

Dick said, “I’ll walk with you.”

Mary lived one block south of Dick. Dick and Mary exchanged phone numbers.

Two weeks later, Mary asked Dick if he wanted to join her on a school trip to Rye, New York.

Dick said, “I really can’t. I have a geometry test to take.” Then he asked, “Will you go steady with me?”

Mary said, “Yes.”

That was the start of a relationship that would last for more than sixty years. He was almost seventeen, and she was fifteen and a half.

This is a story of two people from the Bronx who lived one block from each other. This story is not unique, but it is, in fact, a Cinderella love story.

Dick and Mary went through some hard times. Dick’s parents were not the parents of the year. Mary’s mom raised two daughters alone as she was widowed. She worked in Midtown Manhattan and moved into her present neighborhood, a step up from the East Bronx. Dick’s family were superintendents of a twenty-family building on University Avenue. They didn’t have much. His parents had to support seven children.

But the two kids from the Bronx were like the phoenix. They rose from the ashes, facing obstacles head-on, always putting family first. They moved well into middle-class status by working hard, saving and investing, and always putting family first.

Their legacy lives on.