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SPARKS FLY IN ADVANCED CHEMISTRY I wonder if anyone but Tim (Borkowski) and me remember the time he almost blew up the back room of the Chemistry Lab? Fall of 1963, Mr. Hedrick’s Advanced Chemistry class: a loud KA-BOOM roared from the back room. Tim rushed out shouting ‘It worked!’ He had successfully concocted, and exploded, something like gunpowder. Mr. Hedrick was not impressed. I was. I thought Tim was about the smartest, most creative, and cutest boy ever. At that time I was president of the Science Club, and asked Tim to join. He did. Then I asked him to help make posters for the Christmas banquet. He agreed. I put him on a committee of two: him and me, a clever move, I thought, until he no-showed at my house – three times! Excuse #1: ‘I had to take my sister to the hospital’. (You could have called.) Excuse #2: ‘I’m in the Navy Reserve and had to stand duty all weekend because President Kennedy was shot. (YOU COULD HAVE CALLED!) Excuse #3: I have no idea what it was; I wouldn’t listen. He came over that night. By New Year’s 1964, we were going steady. By the end of the year we had eloped. between classes at Arlington State College (now UT Arlington). We had decided to get married sometime in January. I don’t know why, but we took the required blood tests in early December. On December 14, during a break between morning and afternoon classes, we drove to the Tarrant County Courthouse in Fort Worth intending to get a marriage license we would use later. The clerk informed us that our blood tests were about to expire and a marriage license was only good as long as the blood tests were. To use the tests we had, we had to get married that day! So, with me in a green car coat and white bobby sox, we walked down the hall to a Justice of the Peace and said ‘I do.’ On the way back to campus in our ’58 Plymouth, Tim and I tried to figure out how to tell our parents, without getting them mad, that we’d gotten married that day. We knew they were looking forward to a church wedding; come to think of it, so were we. So we decided not to tell them about our impromptu ceremony. In fact, we never did tell them about it. It’s a secret we have shared with only a select few. Some of the first to know were at the first reunion of Bousada’s Advanced Physics Class (1963-64). The reunion luncheon was a few days after our courthouse caper and I share the news, and a peak at my new wedding ring (which Tim had given me that morning) with Sara Rackley and Virginia Prince. Two months later on February 18, 1965, they and other SOCite friends attended our second, ‘official’, wedding at St. James Catholic Church. The next morning Tim and I packed all our belongings into our ’58 Plymouth and headed for Jacksonville, Florida where Tim was to begin his active duty Navy career at NAS Jax. Our first son, Steven, was born in the Navy hospital there in September 1966. In 1968 we were transferred us NAS Dallas for a short time. Son Matthew was born in Dallas in October 1969. Tim left the Navy in 1971 and we moved to Houston, where, except for several years in South America, we have continued to live. Although I claim to who gotten us together, Tim says he had designs on me first. He says that before I ever said a word to him, he had pointed me out to his lab partner Freddy Kadlabar and declared: There’s the girl I’m going to marry. Seems there was more than just textbook Chemistry going on in Hedrick’s class! So, this year Tim and I are coming to the SOC Reunion in celebration of this 40-years-and counting adventure we’ve been on, the place where it began, and the people who were part of it! Hope to see you there! Carol
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