Chapter 9 - Marriage and Family

Summary

The two weeks in Great Barrington changed my life in a much more profound way: I fell madly in love with that beautiful blond young woman with whom I had coffee my first day at camp. Her name was Carol Stalker. She came from Rochester, New York and had the ambition of becoming one of the first female rabbis, along with two other of her friends. She had one more semester at the University of Michigan and after that was going to apply to Hebrew Union Col¬lege. There had been a discussion about women rabbis in those days but the actuality of their ordination was still a few years off. Carol had just broken off with a young man of similar ambitions at Michigan. So this was a propitious time for me to come into her life. We had long talks about marriage, children and their education, philosophy of life and happiness, and just about anything else one could wish to discuss. By the time the camp was over, after our nightly meetings after curfew, we had decided to get married. Though the musical por¬tion of the camp may not have been all I wished for, the change in my marital status certainly was significant. When we left the camp in Great Barrington, I headed right away to MacDowell while Carol went to another Youth Group Camp in Zionsville, Indiana. We agreed to meet in New York City after two weeks, and I promised to pick her up at the Zionsville camp and take her to Rochester so I could meet her family

With renewed vigor and filled with the most romantic spirit, I arrived in Peterborough and threw myself into the work of writing the opera. I finished the entire vocal score in four weeks, then jumped into the car and drove all the way to Indiana. We had a joyous reunion and together drove to Rochester. Though my reception by her parents was rather cool, we did not care and de¬cided to set the date for our wedding for Valentine's Day, 1960. While I drove back to Dallas, Carol went back to Ann Arbor to finish school. When I arrived back in Dallas, the shock of the forthcoming marriage of what was until then a confirmed bachelor music director was resounding.