Superman and Nedda in One Evening!

I was a senior at Syracuse University during the fall semester of 1958. Syracuse won an invitation to play Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day, 1959. Many Syracuse students were in the Miami area for the game, and I was there to photograph it for the Onondagan, Syracuse University’s yearbook. [Syracuse lost to Oklahoma, 21 to 6.] My parents and my sister, Sylvia, were in Miami Beach for the holidays before my parents left for their annual trip to California to visit my other sister, Lelia, and her family. I came to Florida separately, but stayed with my parents and sister at the Di Lido Hotel, on the ocean at Lincoln Road in Miami Beach.

I had a date for New Year’s Eve with some coed from Syracuse that I knew slightly. We were to double date with another couple from college. As I was leaving the Di Lido to pick up my date, I met Bob Penn, a classmate, who was standing in the hotel lobby. I asked him what he was doing at the hotel, and he said that he was picking up his date, a girl from New York City, who was staying at the Di Lido with her parents. We discussed a threatened airline strike, which was threatened for January second or third. I hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of a strike because I was planning to drive back to Syracuse with a couple of friends who were in Miami Beach for the game. Bob mentioned to me that when he met his date’s parents, her father had told him that if any of the students were stranded because of the strike, he would have room to take one person back in the family car. Just as he told me that, he pointed to the stairway where Nedda was descending to meet him and said that she was his date. I looked at her and told Bob that I thought I would be stranded by the airline strike and could use the ride to New York. He briefly introduced me to Nedda and told her that I needed a ride to New York. She gave me her family’s room number and left with Bob. I went on to pick up my date.

New Year’s Eve was spent with my date and the other couple in one of Miami Beach’s many nightclubs. It was a usual New Year’s Eve for the times: drinking, smoking, and dancing in a smoke-filled nightclub. The highlight of the evening was when we realized that an intoxicated gentleman at the bar was George Reeves, the actor who played Superman in the television series that had been very popular in the early 1950s. Although we were quite certain of his identity, he removed all doubt when, with a drunken smile, he loosened his tie, and opened his shirt to reveal the Superman top he was wearing beneath his suit. [Mr. Reeves was found dead of a bullet wound less than six months later, the cause of which remains an unsolved mystery.]

Although I was somewhat shy, I went to meet Nedda’s parents the next day and told them that I would certainly appreciate a ride to New York since the airline strike was becoming more certain. Although I had a tentative date for that evening with my New Year’s Eve date, I invited Nedda to go out that evening, and then canceled my tentative date with the co-ed, whose identity I have no present recollection of. I think that I took Nedda to a movie and purposely didn’t try to give her a good night kiss because I thought it would be very awkward if she were to be offended by a good night kiss on the first date. [Remember, it was the 50s!] I knew that Nedda was a high school senior, but she said that she was eighteen. A couple of months later I learned that she had recently turned sixteen.

January 1959

The following morning I said goodbye to my parents and Sylvia and met Nedda and her parents for an early morning start for our road trip to New York. It was a harrowing experience. I sat in the back seat of the family sedan with Nedda. She had her hair in curlers for most of the trip. She read magazines, chewed bubble gum, and chatted. Her father, Marty, drove like a maniac, and I doubted I would survive the trip. I frequently

Spring Weekend 1959

offered to drive, but he insisted on driving the whole trip himself. I remember crouching in the back seat while he drove through a late-night torrential rainstorm, passing slow-moving cars on a two-lane Georgia highway. I made no obvious headway with Nedda during that trip, being more concerned with staying alive. When her parents dropped me off at Grand Central Station in New York City where I could catch a train back to Syracuse, I had not even thought to get Nedda's address or telephone number. A few days later, when the terror of the road trip had faded, I called Bob Penn to find out if he had her address. He was reluctant to give it to me, but relented when I told him that I wanted to write a thank you note to her parents. Instead, I wrote to Nedda, and at the semester’s end in late January I drove to New York City for another date. During the following weeks, we corresponded frequently and she flew to Syracuse for Spring Weekend as I was able to arrange for her to stay at a dormitory.  After that weekend, I never dated anyone else. 

       We were married 2-1/2 years later.