The Dance that Changed Olivia’s Life

I guess you could say that I kept meeting my husband. I’d been introduced to him somewhere before, and he’d liked me from the beginning. He even told someone, “that’s the girl I’m going to marry.”

I was sixteen and a half. It was August of 1946. We all worked so we only had the end of August, and I didn’t feel like going anywhere, so we went to Boston for the weekend. And on the boat—it was the Steel Pier then—I met him again. He asked me to dance—it was all big bands on the ferries then—and I guess you could say we danced all the way to Boston. He was on the boat with a friend and never talked to him the whole trip.

I was working at the Gifford House then and a few days later someone told me there was a man waiting for me outside and I went out and it was him. We went out for a year and then got married and that’s it. That’s all I have to say.