My 1982 battle with cancer ruined my marriage to Linda.
Although they cured me of cancer, she made me feel like damaged goods and insisted I give up my theater career after 30 shows.
She had to drive me on a 90-mile round trip from Bradenton to Tampa General Hospital every day for fifty-two radiation treatments.
She never forgave me for that. She even mentioned it in our divorce.
1984, Talking about writing on computers at the Florida Suncoast Writers Conference in St. Petersburg made me realize it was something I could do.
Consequently, I talked to more than two dozen writing groups all over Florida in the next seven years.
1979 Robert Altman was shooting a film at the Don Cesar Resort Hotel in St. Pete Beach, Florida. To my surprise, he hired me to be the Assistant to the Director. Worked Jan 8 to Feb 19 1979,
I met Dick Cavett, Paul Dooley, Glenda Jackson, and Carol Burnett.
But the job ended when I spent two weeks in the hospital with a skull fracture.
Navy guy Dale Crews met my mom, and they became managers of the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Lakeland, FL.
Hoping to create a family to include me, my mother, Dee, married Dale at one minute past midnight on New Year's Eve 1957.
In Lakeland, Florida in 1956 was the first time I was allowed to live with my mother since birth. My grandmother had kept me away from mom for (as it turned out) twenty years.
In 1957, Nonnie and I lived with Dee and Dale Crews in Lakeland, Florida.
I had a few fond memories of that time, learning to love Latin music when I visited my mom at her dance studio, getting to play with the typewriter, and watching Sheena of the Jungle on TV.
