I chose this song because even death cannot change my love for you Connie!!! Never
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1977
The year 1977 started with us being pretty much in a routine. We would leave the house early in the morning around 7 AM and I would drop Connie off at Transnational and then continue to EDS. I was going to see my RA doctor every month and was still taking gold shots, but it did not seem to be helping that much. Back then they did not have all the anti-inflammatory drugs that they have today, so I was taking aspirin also. My use of aspirin was very heavy during the late 70s. The doctor would tell me to take them to my ears started ringing. Some days I would take 20+.
Connie and I went to Sears where the first thing she bought with her first check was a round kitchen table and I still use it today. One of the things I learned from Connie after she started working was time value. Every time she went to buy something she would figure out how many hours she had to work to buy it and then decide if it was worth buying. The year 1977 started with us being pretty much in a routine. We would leave the house early in the morning around 7 AM and I would drop Connie off at Transnational and then continue to EDS. I was going to see my RA doctor every month and was still taking gold shots, but it did not seem to be helping that much. Back then they did not have all the anti-inflammatory drugs that they have today, so I was taking aspirin also.
My Projects
As for me, my work was continuing to go ok. I had spent the years 1976 and 1977 going to the library and getting books out about life insurance and trying to learn as much as I could about the industry, I was working in. It took some of our free time away, but I kept telling Connie the more I learned now the easier it would be for me in the future. I was hoping I would not have to put in as much time and would have more time for the two of us. I do not know if she believed it or not, but it did not seem to work till the early 2000s as I always seemed to end up on projects with a tight deadline that kept me extremely busy. My first major project for me was the installation of our Life Insurance System called LMS-1 at an insurance company in Chicago called FDL. It was a one-man project as their main business was selling group insurance. They had about 1,500 policies of single life insurance that I converted and installed on the new system. It gave me a lot of experience.
Working on that project got me involved in a group for another project. We attempted to sell to really small insurance companies a weekly service where they would send us all their input for the week by bus on Friday night and we would keypunch their information and enter it to produce all their reports and return them by bus on Monday morning. We were never able to sell any small insurance companies on this concept, but it was thought at the time we could, and I enjoyed the experience.
New Car — Mexican Food
Connie and I decided we would buy another car so that she could come and go on her own. She found a used Volkswagen that was in good shape and had air conditioning; a must-have here in Texas. So, in the spring of 1977, we bought it and she loved that little car. It was about 5 years old but was in great shape with very few miles on it. So now we had two cars and that was working out great for us.
Since we had moved here in 1973 neither Connie nor I had been big fans of Mexican food. But that was about to change. Connie would go out with people to eat and every Friday her whole group would go to a Mexican place called Pancho’s Mexican Buffet. At the time it was an all you could eat Mexican Buffet. The food was good, the service was good, and the price was good. I have not been in over 20 years and I think a lot of them have closed. It was better than your fast-food Mexican places like Taco Bell but not as nice as a real Mexican restaurant. Anyway, by her doing that and getting me to go, we became addicted to Mexican Food and have eaten that at least once a week or more ever since then. Refried Beans which I had once said looked like ***** now became one of my favorite things. The great thing about Pancho’s is that you had a little flag on the table and when you put it up they would bring you some sopapillas. They were so good with honey.
South Padre Island
During the summer of 1977, Connie and I took a vacation to South Padre Island. You can read all about that adventure in South Padre Island –1977 or maybe I should have called it “You’re Late for Your Vacation”. That summer continued as normal, and we fell into our daily routine. There were beginning to be little things that I was not comfortable doing anymore as they would cause me pain. I no longer ran and or rode a bike and avoided things that were strenuous on my joints. I was still able to mow and do a lot of yard work.
Life Insurance
We were enjoying our summer and fall. One of the things I did that year was to take out a $5,000 Life Insurance Policy on Connie. I met with a new agent from Northwestern Mutual in the cafeteria of EDS one afternoon to take out this policy. I also wanted to take out a life insurance policy on me, but Northwestern would not take me because of my Rheumatoid Arthritis without rating me and making the premiums too high. Luckily this agent worked and found me two policies, one for $15,000 and one for $20,000 dollars. The companies also rated me but not as high a risk as Northwestern, so I took those two policies for several years. EDS eventually came out with a great group plan and I dropped those two policies.
What was very interesting about this situation, is about two months after I lost Connie, I was attending one of our genealogy meetings and since I was the secretary, I took the minutes. We had a new member that had just moved to our retirement community. His name was Ted S., and he was the agent who sold me Connie’s policy. I probably would not have recognized the name but in handling all the stuff I need to after her passing, I came across his name on the policy. We got to talking and while he did not remember me, he did remember coming to EDS’s cafeteria and selling a policy. He said he remembered it because he was only in his first or second month of selling insurance and that trip out to the EDS campus was the only time he was there. Such a small world.
Sheltie?
In November of that year, one of the girls Connie worked with was originally from Oklahoma and her parents had a sheltie that had a litter of puppies and Connie decided we would get one. Connie had never had a dog but when we were in Springfield in 1975 Marty and Jeanette had a sheltie called Beau Bell and she fell in love with the breed. So, as the year closed out we anxiously awaited the arrival of the new puppy, Connie had raised parakeets as a teenager, and we had parakeets for a long time, but she had always wanted a sheltie ever since she met Beau Bell.
1978
Brandy – Our First Sheltie
The first thing I remember about 1978 was mid to late January we got our first Sheltie puppy. He was so cute, and Connie always said he could fit into my shoes. I am not sure that is correct, but he was very small. We got him on a Sunday evening when the lady who Connie worked with brought him back from Oklahoma. Connie named him Brandy. It snowed that night and we were not able to go to work the next day. But Tuesday morning while it was still bad and we were not going to drive all that distance to go to work, we decided to take Brandy to a local vet just to make sure everything was ok. I remember it so well as the vet had just opened his place of business and was just starting. His name was Dr. Reeves and he was the vet we used for all our shelties over the next 30+ years. We had taken Connie’s Volkswagen and I remember as we were pulling in the front wheels going into a rut because we could not see it for the snow. Afterward, Dr. Reeves and I pushed the Volkswagen out of the hole while Connie steered. We were lucky with Brandy as he never really had any health issues until the very end.
Work
I had started the previous fall working on a new project rewriting a couple of our Policy Administration programs that fed our billing system from assembler to Cobol for a company in Binghamton New York called Security Mutual Life. That continued until late spring of 1978 when we would begin the installation of the new system for them.
I was so busy during that time and I remember one Sunday Connie was sick and I felt the pressure from the project to go into the office as back then we could not work from home. I know that is the only time that I felt guilty and still do about leaving her and going to work. It was the wrong thing to do. The problem was Connie knew it was the wrong thing to do also, so that made it even worse. I do not remember it this way, but she said I held her up in the shower got her cleaned, and then took off to work. She always gave me a hard time about that.
New TV
Early, that summer I was working a lot of hours and then I started traveling to Binghamton New York for three or four months. One morning I needed to go by the office but had a flight to New York to catch in the early afternoon. Connie wanted to stop by this new furniture store that had opened in Plano, and reluctantly I agreed but not without a lot of complaining. She stopped to register for some prizes to be given away and I kept telling her it did not matter as we would never win anything. About a month after Connie had done that, I called home from Binghamton NY and she surprised me by saying that she had won that new TV. It was a great TV and was our main TV for 12 to 15 years. It was a beautiful piece of furniture. I do not recall ever complaining again when she wanted to stop and register for a prize as I had learned my lesson.
The trips to Binghamton were hard because we would leave on a Monday stay over a weekend and come home the following Thursday night. So, I was away quite a bit that summer. It was during that time that Connie had her hair cut short. For the rest of her life, she kept her hair short. She had beautiful thick hair and I always liked it long but since she was working it was much easier for her to have it short.
Pecan Pie
During that summer there were times when my RA affected me, one was a Sunday in late May when I was cooking two small pecan pies in the oven. Anyway, my hands were hurting and when I went to take one of them out with the oven mitt my wrists were hurting so bad, that I turned it over and dumped the hot pecan pie right into the middle of my other hand. A big blister arose in my palm and I was having a hard time doing anything with that hand. The next day, I caught a flight to Binghamton for another two-week stint. The insurance company had a nurse there and I went to see her, she was just as bad as they were in the service with blisters, she just cut all the blistered skin off put antibiotics on it, and then wrapped it up, it hurt like heck.
Toward the end of my trips to Binghamton, and close to the installation of the new system, I worked probably the longest stretch of almost continuous hours that I ever would for EDS. I had heard the war stories when I started about bringing in cots for the installation and people not going homes for weeks but mine was not that bad. There were four of us up there during that time and we went in on a Friday at 8 AM, we did not leave the office until around eleven PM on Saturday night, we were back in the office at six AM on Sunday and did not leave until five PM on Monday. That was a very tough stretch of work but when you are young. you can do things like that.
One of my good friends, Nolan had spent a lot more time traveling and did a lot more for the installation of the system at SML, than I had quit that fall. When the project was finished, they gave him two baseball tickets to see the Texas Rangers. That upset him and he left the company. He would return about four years later and we worked together till we both retired. It was not much of a reward for all that he had done.
That summer of 1978 or it may have been the summer of 1977, but I believe it was 1978, my mother-in-law came down to visit and she brought our nephew with her as he was only 6 or 7 years old. I took off a couple of days to spend with them as Connie could not get much time off. We went for a ride one day, to nowhere in particular which was something Connie and I did a lot. Anyway, we ended up on the main street of Allen after a few hours of driving in the country and stopped at a Sonic Drive-In for milkshakes. That was about the only thing in the town as it was very small and little did, I realize that in about two years I would move there.
Fall of 1978 — Health Issues
The fall of 1978 brought a new assignment and also some health issues. I was assigned as the project leader for installing our policy administration, Billing and Collection and other, systems at Lamar Life in Jackson Mississippi. My good friend Gary would lead another effort to install the New Business system which would go in about nine months before my project would.
Connie and I had gone to our bank, Plano Bank & Trust around ten AM one on a Saturday, and the teller said Happy Birthday Mr. Buntley. I said how did you know it was my birthday and she said in on your license and it is expiring next Wednesday. That set off a big panic for me. I was supposed to leave the next day Sunday for my first visit to the Lamar Life account in Jackson Mississippi. What was I going to do, my license would be expiring would they rent me a car for a week if my license was going to expire? Thank goodness Connie kept me calm and we made some calls and finally found a place open that would renew my driver’s license on a Saturday, but it was over near Lake Ray Hubbard which back then was a good 40 minutes away. It was about noon and if I remember correctly, they were open untill three that day. We took off immediately. When we got there there were all these kids waiting to take their driving test with the state trooper. Luckily, we did not have to get in that line, but it still took us untill almost three to get my driver’s license renewed. I am so glad we got it done because when I went to rent the car the next day, I had to show them that my driver’s license was being renewed. That began a long stretch of traveling to Jackson MS. for that installation.
Hospitals
Unfortunately, things were about to change for us. Around mid-October on a Friday, I was not feeling well and stayed home from work. The pain got so bad that I called a guy, I knew from EDS to take me to the Emergency Room around ten AM. They diagnosed me with a kidney stone gave me a pain shot and admitted me to the hospital. The shot helped and the pain was not too bad. Finally, on Sunday morning I passed the stone and they released me from the hospital. It was before eleven because I remember Connie and I going home for a while and then we went to a Long Johns Silver. I can still remember the one we went to because it is still there. Late that afternoon, I started having severe chest pains, and Connie and I thought I was having a heart attack. We finally got hold of my doctor and he told me to go to the emergency room at Baylor Hospital which is near downtown Dallas, Since it was already after 9 and I did not want Connie in that area of town by herself, I called one of the guys I worked with and he went with us. Anyway, they were not sure what was going on, so they admitted me, but they did not think it was a heart attack. I spent the rest of the week at Baylor with Connie coming to see me after work. I know that was hard for her to drive to downtown Dallas and then going back home was a lot. The pain kept coming and going until on Friday they finally diagnosed it. I had a bad gallbladder and would have to have it removed.
I did not like the diagnosis and especially the thought of surgery but at least I knew what was causing it. Then they came back with more bad news, the x-rays had shown a widening of my esophagus and they thought there may be a tumor behind it pushing against it to make it that wide. I was released on Friday afternoon, knowing that I was going to have to have my gallbladder removed but also worring that I may have a tumor. That evening we went to a party that my workgroup was having. We stayed till about 1:30 in the morning and then a bunch of us went to an IHOP (I think) to have breakfast. The next morning, I remember so well, as Connie was driving and we were headed to North Dallas, I kept thinking about the tumor and I was extremely worried.
The next week after consulting with my internist who was also treating my RA, he sent me to see a surgeon in the building. Luckily, I was able to get an appointment that week and there was good news. Yes, I was going to have to have the gallbladder removed but after looking at the X-rays he told me that there was no tumor there that I just had a wide esophagus. You do not know how relieved I was. While most of the surgery he did was at Baylor, he decided he would do mine at a small private hospital right next to Baylor, where he thought I would get better care. It was called Gaston.
It was late October or early November when I checked into the hospital for my gallbladder removal. Back then it was quite different as they had to open you up to remove the gallbladder. I know I have a long scar from my chest to my abdomen. Anyway, on Wednesday morning they did the surgery and did it quite early. Connie was there for me all that day. She would come during her lunch hour and after work for the next two days. I was supposed to get up and walk but if you have ever been open up the way I was for that surgery you are definitely not going to like it. Getting up when you have been cut from your chest to your abdomen is very hard. You keep a pillow pressed to you all the time. Connie used to laugh about how this huge black woman would just get me out of the bed and drag me down the hall, as she was not taking no for an answer, she made me walk even though I did not want to. For some reason, I had a panic attack on Friday night and was thinking I could not breathe. They called the doctor and then sprayed my throat to numb it. I have not had many panic attacks in my life and that was my first.
Connie came late Saturday morning and I was really worried because she had not gotten there yet. Anyway, she brought me flowers. I then found out why she had been so late as a section of our fence had blown over and she had to get it back up before she could come down. I would stay in the hospital for a week as I would get out on Tuesday. I then spent another week at home recovering.
After I returned to work Connie and I decided to take Bob the guy who took Connie and me to the hospital late one Sunday evening and my manager Cal who was very helpful to Connie in navigating the insurance, etc. to a dinner theater. We also took their wives. The dinner theaters were very popular back then and we took them to see Marty Robbins. It was a great show and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
Christmas -1978
The Christmas of 1978 Connie’s mother spent in Tennessee with Connie’s sister and family but then she came to see us a couple of days after Christmas. We had a wonderful time and were enjoying her being here. She was scheduled to go back on Monday, January 1st, but something changed all of that. We had an ice storm on Sunday, December 31st, and it was bad. It is still listed as number eight in the nation’s top ten ice storms. Here is a clip that talks about that storm.
New Year’s Eve 1978 was the worst ice storm in North Texas in three decades, producing ice accumulations up to 2 inches thick in a 100-mile-wide swath from just west of Waco to Paris, Texas.
New Year’s Eve 1978 ice storm facts:
- 2,000 residents were treated for injuries from vehicle accidents, falls on ice, and frostbite.
- Nearly 300,000 Dallas County customers lost power for two days. Others lost power for
up to 10 days. - $14 million in damage in Dallas County
These facts are just for Dallas County and we got it much worse in Collin County just north of Dallas. The ice was so thick you had a hard time just stepping outside your door without falling. It started with what seemed like a heavy ice storm about 3 or 4 that afternoon and by 6 it was really bad, We called and changed Connie’s mother’s tickets back to New York and rescheduled her on an early flight the morning of January 2nd. Her mother was still working at the time and had to get back to her job. Her mother worked at a school for deaf children and was very good at sign language. The roads were still bad all day Monday and we did not know if we would be able to get her to the airport or not.
Finally, we decided if we could get her to a Sur-Tran station, which was a place buses ran to and from the airport from these locations. We needed to get her to the station around 2 AM as the next bus to the airport did not leave till 5 AM and since her plane was at 6:30 we were not sure the later bus would get her to the airport in time.
The roads were trickery and we left about 12:15 am for what would have been at most a 30-minute drive maybe 20 at that time of the morning. It took us an hour and a half but we got there at about 1:45. We waited and we waited finally at 2:30 we decided the bus was not coming so we took off to the airport and it was very slow going. It took us over 3 hours to get there. Around 5:45 we got into the airport with her mother hoping to get something to eat. Almost everything was closed and those that were open had no food and they had not been able to get supplies since Sunday. Luckily for us, the planes were going to take off but there would be delays as they had spent most of Monday clearing the runways. Connie’s mother’s plane was now going to leave about an hour later at 8 AM.
The weather was supposed to warm up till about 37 that day but it was still cold this early in the morning. Connie and I made it from the Airport to North Dallas in about an hour and a half and stopped at an IHOP for breakfast. The roads were getting a little bit clearer with the temperature around 30 degrees now and more traffic on the road. I finally got Connie to her office a little after 9 and then went on to work myself.
By the time the day was over most of the ice was gone as the temperature was in the mid-30s. That will be a New Year’s Eve and a day Connie and I will never forget.
1979
A Year of Travel
The year started with me traveling to Jackson Mississippi every other week as I was leading the installation of some of our systems at Lamar Life. I started the project in September of 1978, and it would go live on January 1st, 1980. I did not realize the toll it would take on our marriage being gone every other week for almost a full year. But more about that later.
In early January one of the weeks I was in town, we had snow. And I decided it was not bad enough for us to stay home. I was wrong we spun out and went into a small ditch about halfway to Connie’s place of work. Luckily we had taken her Volkswagen and some people stopped and helped us push it out of the ditch. That was one thing that changed Connie’s mind about driving in the snow forever. With just a little bit of snow, Connie would beg me not to go to work. But most of the time I did unless it was really bad. It was many years later that I realized Connie was right as she was almost always. There was no sense in taking a chance not only with your car being damaged, you getting hurt, or you hurting someone else. There are many things that I wish I had listened to her earlier than I did. Thank you, Connie, for teaching me things I needed to know even though it took you decades sometimes. I love you for that.
Connie’s New Job
Our office also moved from North Dallas to a new building in Plano which was only about 5 minutes from where I lived. That was so great that I was so close to home.
Connie would also change jobs in the early months of 1979. She had been at Transnational for almost two years, but it was time for her to move on. Connie had a big heart and cared about the people she liked. At this time Connie had just barely turned 30 and there was an older lady in her late 50’s or early 60’s who was driving a long way for this job probably over an hour into north Dallas. Anyway, they decided to let her go and Connie felt they were being unfair to her, so she called several of the people in management that night to try to get them to reverse their decision. They would not. That probably happened in late 1978 so Connie decided she did not want to be with a company like that and found herself a new job.
Connie, new job was the secretary of the owner of a Cadillac dealership. The dealership was called (I have decided not to use the name because of some of the stuff I am going to say late probably in the 80s. “XXXX XXXX” Cadillac’s was located in McKinney Texas which was much closer to where we lived. She enjoyed working there at first but soon found out car dealer personnel were different from the people she normally hung around with. At least they were back in the late 70s and early 80s. I am not going to write much about this during this year but when I start writing about the 80’s you will understand why I did not use the dealership’s name. For most of that year, Connie was very happy as it was a whole new routine for her and since she worked for the owner, she did not have much to do with most of the other people.
Spring and Earning a FLMI
It was spring and I had taken an early flight from Dallas to Jackson Mississippi on a Sunday morning. I had a lot to get done and decided to spend most of the day that Sunday would help me get caught up. It did not turn out that way, as I had the worst pain in my ears as they hurt so bad when they started landing the plane. I ended up going to the emergency room as soon as the plane landed, and they gave me some medicine to ease the pressure on my ears. They stated that I was lucky I had not busted an eardrum. The pain continued on several flights after that just not as bad. My doctor ended up prescribing something to take as soon as I got on the plane and to take it every 4 hours. I never flew without those pills again.
It was also in the spring that I completed a program called Fellow of Life Management Institute and was awarded an FLMI designation. It was 8 courses that I had taken over the last 3 years. While the first 7 courses were multiple-choice questions the 8th course consisted of two three-hours written exam with the first 3 hours being about life insurance in general and the second three hours being on a specialty in the life insurance field. I chose for my specialization “Information Systems” which most people at our company chose. EDS was trying to show the insurance companies that we understood their business. The final essay exam was only offered once a year and I had failed to complete it on my first try but was successful on my second try. For those of you who know me well, you will not be surprised as writing was not easy for me. Heck, you can probably tell it from reading this blog. I was in the third group to earn this designation at EDS. There now were a total of about 15 FLMIs in a group of close to 200 people working in the life insurance industry at EDS. As usual, it was Connie that helped me prepare for the essay part. No, she was not able to write it for me but she worked with me so I could do well enough to pass it. She had some incentive for doing that which I will tell you about later.
Summer 1979
At least Connie was close enough to home that she did not have to rush to get home to let the dogs out during her lunch hour.
Things were going pretty well as we headed into the summer, the only problem was spending every other week away, and then when I was home I was putting in a lot of hours. I remember one Friday evening that I had gotten back from Jackson and then spent the whole night re-coding a bunch of stuff we had already done. That just meant it took another day away from being there for Connie.
Chicago
Late September rolled around, and it was time for Connie and me to take a trip. In the fall to Chicago. The Life Office Management Association sponsored a conference for all those people who had earned their FLMI that year. EDS was pushing that education program so they would send those who had earned that designation and their spouse to the convention. So, on September 22nd, 1979 Connie and I head to Chicago for the LOMA convention. It was a Saturday afternoon at about 1 pm when we left for Chicago.
The first night we were in for a big shock as the Shriners were also staying at the same hotel. Our friends Gary and Carol were also on the trip plus several other couples that we knew. That evening Connie and I went out for a little bit to explore downtown Chicago, but the shock came when we got back to the hotel around 9 pm. As we got on the elevator it seemed to stop on every floor. Our room was on one of the floors in the low 20’s so stopping at every floor was a big deal. It turns out the Shriners were having a “Come as you’re going to bed” party. We were shocked as we saw some things we would like to have forgotten and some things that were a little more risqué for the times. There were people in their underwear and people in nightgowns. People in robes of all shapes and sizes. It was kind of eye-opening at least for me. But you know of all the things we remember about that trip that is the main one.
The next day we went to the top of the Sears Tower and visited a couple of museums and just did the tourist things. They had educational sessions on many different topics on Monday and Tuesday but very few of us attended more than one session as we were just enjoying ourselves. In fact, after a couple of more years, EDS quit sending people to the convention as not many were attending the educational session. Instead, they knew people just wanted to get away to celebrate their accomplishments, so they just sent them for a long weekend in Colorado to reward them and then did some team-building exercises.
The only other thing we did was go to the Playboy Club with a bunch of people on Monday night and that was a waste of time and money. It was very expensive for the meal and the drink and being served by women in skimpy uniforms was not worth the cost that we were charged.
The net evening was an awards dinner for all of the people in the US who were being awarded their FLMI designation. I was amazed as they served over 2,000 people at the same time and the food was really good.
The rest of the year was just filled with trips to Jackson and some extra weekends there as we were supposed to go live with the new system on January 1st, 1980.
Christmas — 1979
That Christmas, Connie’s sister, brother-in-law, and their two kids came. The weather was very nice that year and we got out and about a lot. We took them to the Christmas Tree store, the same one we took my mother to in 1975. It was in a different location every year. The people who own it spend 9 months of the year traveling and looking for things for the store. Connie’s sister bought a tree and other things. She used that tree for many many years. We also spent time looking at houses in Plano as at that time I think they were considering moving to the Dallas area but eventually, my brother-in-law was unable to get a transfer. If I remember correctly, they left on New Year’s Eve or the day before. We enjoyed our time with them.