Marilyn

Contrary to what some folks here might tell you, Vic and Marilyn didn't meet here in Confluence. Oh yes, Marilyn was born and raised here--fell into her Mother's lap in the back upstairs bedroom in 204 Westside Avenue. She was the only child of Hazel and Theodore Coolidge.

Mr. Coolidge was a blood member of the particular family I'm certain you're thinking of, and his business was in commerce and trading. He spent most of his young adult life in the shipyards downstate, but after a crane dropped a cargo load of freight on him when he was 28, breaking his back and damn near killing him, he brought his wife to our town, and took up the law for a living. He wasn't a very good lawyer from what I understand, but his family had great political connections, and thus he was often able to turn things the way he intended.

But that isn't to say he was a bad man. Rather, the citizens of our sleepy township adored him. Most remember Theodore Coolidge as a fair man, a solid gentleman who resisted the temptation of plowing the easier row his family name afforded him, and a hard worker. Naturally, between his lawyering and the family business, money came his way; but he donated generously to many civic projects that came to Confluence after the war. Hence the Coolidge Library, the T.L. Coolidge Memorial Highway leading into town, and the now-defunct Hazel Meadowbright Coolidge Convalescence Home that sat off of Winter Street before it closed following the establishment of the state hospital across the mountain.

Marilyn was their only child. She was born right smartly in the middle of Confluence's hottest summer. I am not certain if temperature influences tenacity, but perhaps the unbreakable spirit that saturated Marilyn later in her life was borne from the fire of her birthday.

If you read through the archives of the Confluence Spectator, you'll find her birth announcement and several notes about her in the months following. The townspeople apparently enjoyed seeing the Coolidge family about--or at least the newsletter's editor figured it wise to publish more than the occasional social note regarding one of the town's more upstanding families.

Here is a paragraph from the Spectator shortly after Labor Day the year she was born:

"End-of-summer festivities and Confluence's Labor Day Celebration marked the end to an taxing and flagrantly hot August. Families came out for an afternoon of entertainment, thrills, and singing. Mayor Conrad Holmes delivered a fiery sermon from the steps of the Municipal Building, and the Calvary Quintet out of Berryville roused the crowd with its message of salvation. Perhaps the greatest attraction however, and one that did not appear on any billing of events, was the debut of Ms. Marilyn Edisto Coolidge with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. T.L. Coolidge. The proud Coolidge family attracted quite a crowd...."

Mrs. Cooley, from whom I rented my first apartment in Confluence, later told me that Marilyn's very existence was seen in town as a miracle of sorts. Apparently--and this is a little-known fact, one certainly not published anywhere--Mrs. Coolidge nearly died in childbirth, having lost a seemingly irrecoverable amount of blood. Mr. Coolidge himself underwent the transfusion that saved her life.

And though no one officially recorded the difficulties of Marilyn's birth, word soon enough spread about the wonder. Poor Mr. Coolidge had suffered enough, what with a broken back that nearly crippled him. His very act of delivering blood directly into his wife's body, however, was the minor miracle needed for him to achieve sainthood in these parts.

My kind landlord went on to tell me about the day Marilyn was christened. It was a wonderfully warm October day, warm enough to throw open the windows of St. Michael's, and every eye in the congregation refused to leave the baby. Old folks cooed at her. Younger folks couldn't help but smile. And the children...well, they were fascinated by her. The baby's soft skin radiated in the orange light inside the church. Never had the dedication of a child to God been more gripping, nor had any member of this community thought harder about or took more seriously the bond of agreement to raise this child in the right.

All of this sounds a bit overdone, as if Marilyn were the Christ-child, and it's possible Mrs. Cooley's memory of this is sweetened with sentimentality. But they all, every one of them, loved Marilyn.

She became the star of the town. In grade school, she delivered the leading lines in the Christmas play. In a time when female athletes were rare, she took it upon herself to establish a girl's volleyball team--in the seventh grade. If you've ever scratched your head at the sand courts behind the gymnasium at the junior high school, you should know they're there because Marilyn asked for them.

The stories could fill pages and pages, tales both hilarious and substantial, both charming and arresting. The time she tripped Conrad Holmes in the middle of the street. The time she pulled Francis Templeton out of the Tinton River. When she was in second grade and she brought home the town drunk, demanding that her father let him have a bath. The winter she fell on a patch of ice and broke her leg and four boys from the senior high took turns carrying her about until she could walk again.

There are several pictures of her in the files of the Spectator, providing a documentary of sorts as she grew up. There is a feature article of her volleyball team and an accompanying picture of her as a brand new adolescent: khaki skirt hiding spindly legs; volumes of auburn hair, curled, running every which way; a toothy grin, the lightest freckles, and steel gray eyes that never changed. Later, in the high school yearbook, her picture taken to honor her position as the class secretary completes the transformation from young girl into young woman. Her grin and her eyes were much the same.

Marilyn graduated with honors. That summer she became a debutante, although from what I understand the festivities weren't as formal as old Southern cotillions tend to be. She never would have wanted it that way. Rather, the event became a going-away party of sorts: Marilyn had enrolled at Bryn Mawr. Confluence's darling sweetheart was leaving.

to be continued...