Deborah Kirk Dewey Hampton

The year was 1954

The place was Highland Swim Club, a newly opened Family Pool bordering Fanwood and Westfield. New Jersey.

And here I was seated with high school friends on top of the pool house looking down on a small gathering of young girls seated by the pool absorbed in a lively conversation.

One in particular caught my eye.

She was animated, lively, alive, with the most engaging smile I had ever seen.

A popular singer, Frankie Laine sang about "The cutest girl he had ever seen."

I saw her.

And I was captivated.

The next summer I gathered the courage to ask her out.

After a movie at the Strand Theatre in Plainfield, NJ. I took her to Grunnings, a famous ice cream eatery and insisted that she have a banana split, latter finding out that she didn't like banana splits.

A few dates later she told me her mother

thought II was too old for her.

A devastating blow.

Years passed. Debbie got married. I joined the Navy. And in my stateroom, on the wall, I hung a picture of Deborah Dewey.

After the Navy I began working in New York in an advertising agency and I moved to Princeton, N.J.

One morning at the train station in Newark, between trains, I saw an old friend of hers, "Did you hear, Debbie's got divorced. She living in Kingston, just outside Princeton, with her 2-year-old son."

I called her and she invited me over. We talked old times. She asked if I had ever fallen in love. I told her. "Once." "Do I know her?" "Yes. Someday I'll tell you who she was"

Sometime later, while dancing with her in my apartment and with a blazing red face, I told her.

"I know", she said.

What followed was 54 years of marriage with the most engaging and wonderful (and cutest) woman I have ever met.

"I must have been something in a former life," I told her, "To be given this gift".

I can't complain, now that I've lost her.

I can't feel sorry for myself.

I've been the luckiest guy in the world. "I've been blessed." I often say

Still…

Life isn't the same.

"I love you, Deb"

"And I miss you".

Donations in her memory welcomed to:

Best Friends The Sanctuary