Their Love Story

As related to me over the years by my mother, Nancy

She had a brilliant, dimpled Southern smile. Her blonde hair was ever so slightly tinged golden, framing her impossibly pale face. Having been born almost completely blind, and the youngest of four children, her family indulged her because of her childhood blindness. "Poor little Nancy" was how the family thought of her. When she sent off to boarding school at the Governor Morehead School Of The Blind, even her dormitory director favored her over the other girls. But, being spoiled out of pity isn't the same as being valued and cherished. Listening to her remembrances, I always had the impression that Nancy grew up feeling isolated. I think she was a deeply lonely child.

She attended the Gov. Morehead school until junior high school (what we would call "middle school" today), when she was placed in public school. From the reminiscences she shared, she was necessarily isolated from her public school classmates by her disability. Her seat was placed next to the teacher's desk so she could make out whatever might be written on the blackboard. Having always been indulged and having grown to expect preferential treatment could not have endeared her to her middle and high school classmates. In all the tales she shared, Nancy rarely regaled us with tales of interactions with fellow students. And, I know she was intensely unhappy as a teen and emotionally straining to break free of her family's smothering overprotection and mollycoddling. Her mother was especially controlling and fretted over her in the style of what we, today, would call "helicopter parenting" – back then, it was called "domineering."

Seventeen-year-old Nancy was "keeping company" with Gene, in 1960. Gene was visiting with one of his older brothers, who was in the Army at Fort Bragg. His nearest in age sibling, David, Gene explained to her, was a lonely, prolific letter writing sailor stationed on overseas duty in Spain. Gene went on to further explain that no one among their circle of friends and family wrote letters with the frequency nor as voluminously as David wrote. Nancy, though, was an avid letter writer herself, maintaining a few penpal letter exchanges. So, she readily agreed when Gene asked her to add his brother to her small group of penpals. Not long after David and Nancy connected, Gene returned home to their parents. After months of exchanging correspondence and photographs, David was madly in love with Nancy – one might even say he had become obsessed. She was definitely infatuated with the romance of the distant sailor.

A couple of months before the end of 1960, David wrote and asked Nancy what she would like for a Valentine's Day gift. Well, Nancy knew a recently married acquaintance, whose Army husband was on tour in Spain, and who had received an elaborate Spanish collectible doll, set upon a box of fine Spanish chocolates from her spouse when he returned home that Fall. Mother described it in exacting detail in her letter and waited expectantly for its arrival.

David scoured the Spanish markets where he was stationed. He even traveled farther afield to the nearest major cities. He explained in his Valentine's letter that he had been unable to find the requested collectible gift. Instead, he had enclosed a rather smaller gift and hoped it would be a welcome substitute. Nancy opened the enclosed box and found an engagement ring. His first visit home after that, he made a flying visit to where she lived and they were married after a meagre three days in-person acquaintance. Nancy jumped at the opportunity to get out from under her family's coddling and her mother's control.

Nancy had finally found someone who cherished her, for her own sake. While the beginning of their love story would be the start of a fraught relationship and tragic end if it were fiction, with Nancy and David, the rest of their story was Life and Love.

In the drawing/painting, a climbing vine grows from mother’s roses behind her, up and across the top of the arch, while another vine grows up the wall behind my father, reaching toward mother’s vine – This is intended to symbolize them always reaching toward each other, and the love they shared.

Mother was born 09 April 1943, and passed 24 September 2018. Dad was born 20 April 1941.

Below is the photograph from which I was working and the images of each of the stages I shared as work on the portrait progressed.

Due to my own careless mistake, I signed the drawing with the year as 2018, instead of the actual year it was completed in January of 2019. It wasn't possible to correct because it had already been sent off to be framed under glass by the time I realized my error from my photos.

To create this portrait of my parents, I heavily layered colored pencil on 11x14 illustration board, with a wash technique applied to smooth the color and to completely fill the surface with color, as well as to create a painted effect. In some places, I dissolved white colored pencil to make watercolor paint, and painted it over the dry colored pencil – for example, this is the technique I used to get Mother’s skin tone just right. I added bright gold acrylic ink, for a finishing detail, applied for their glasses and the decorative swirls on Mother’s dress – It’s not readily apparent in this photograph of the drawing, but the gold ink is bright and shiny and catches the light… just as Mother would have loved it to be.

I shared this portrait Art back in January of 2019, but I didn't have the heart to share their love story then.