1969 was the most impor­tant year of my life. It was cram-packed with momen­tous events.

Neil Arm­strong climbed down Apol­lo 11 Eagle’s lad­der to set foot on the moon.

A com­put­er net­work gave birth to the ARPANET, which evolved into today’s internet.

Ted Kennedy drove his car off a one lane bridge into Poucha Pond on Chap­paquid­dick Island, killing both Mary Jo Kopechne and his chances of ever becom­ing President.

The NYPD raid­ed the Stonewall Inn, trig­ger­ing riots that led to the gay lib­er­a­tion movement.

A quar­ter of a mil­lion peo­ple marched on Wash­ing­ton to demand an end to the Viet­nam War.

Big-name artists enter­tained a crowd of almost a half-mil­lion peo­ple on a dairy farm in upstate New York at a rock con­cert dubbed the Wood­stock Festival.

These events changed the cul­ture of the nation and altered its his­to­ry, but I didn’t remem­ber they had occurred in 1969 until I did the research for this post. The only day of that year I remem­bered with­out prompt­ing was June 20.

I woke up in the Will­cox Hotel in Aiken, South Car­oli­na, feel­ing nau­seous and light-head­ed. I took a long show­er, turn­ing the hot water faucet way up, then switch­ing to cold water, then back to hot.

It didn’t help. My prob­lem wasn’t phys­i­cal. It was psy­cho­so­mat­ic. I was ner­vous about the upcom­ing main event of the day. My wedding.

My anx­i­ety didn’t spring from doubts about Cindy. From our first date on, I was sure I want­ed to spend my life with her.

The prob­lem was with me. I’d been wor­ried ever since I’d asked Cindy’s dad for her hand in mar­riage. His answer went on for an hour. He didn’t say no, but he didn’t say yes. My win­ning per­son­al­i­ty didn’t seem to bowl him over. For some rea­son, he kept pound­ing on nit­pick­ing details, like I didn’t have a job or any mon­ey or any prospects of get­ting a job or any money.

I came out of that meet­ing des­per­ate to prove my wor­thi­ness. With a new sense of urgency, I man­aged to line up a job and squir­rel away some cash before our wed­ding day, but my anx­i­ety didn’t go away. Down deep inside I knew Cindy’s dad was right to wor­ry about me. I was imma­ture and untest­ed, and on June 20, I didn’t know if I’d grown up enough to be Cindy’s, or anybody’s, husband.

Mid-after­noon I went to my par­ents’ room and told them I was scared sick. Mom had made clear to me long before the wed­ding that Cindy was my sav­ing grace in her eyes. For the rest of her life, she would remind me every chance she got, “You nev­er would have amount­ed to any­thing if you hadn’t found Cindy.” She had no patience that after­noon with my ner­vous stom­ach or any­thing else that might derail our mar­riage. “Get over it,” she barked.

Dad had suf­fered from a ner­vous con­di­tion since he was a boy, so he was a lit­tle more under­stand­ing. He took me aside and hand­ed me a half-pint bot­tle of green vis­cous liq­uid, which he called nerve med­i­cine. “Take two tea­spoons of this,” he said. “It helps.”

I trun­dled back to my room. The label on Dad’s bot­tle of “nerve med­i­cine” said it was thir­ty per­cent alco­hol. Might work, I thought. I downed two tea­spoons. It didn’t help. I took anoth­er dose. Still nothing.

I’d drained the whole bot­tle by the time Dad drove me to the church, but my stom­ach was still doing back­flips. Sup­pose I faint dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, I thought. Worse yet, sup­pose I throw up. I’ll nev­er live it down, and Cindy will dump me for sure. The more I envi­sioned all the ways I could screw up the wed­ding, not to men­tion my whole life, the worse I felt.

Cindy’s family’s min­is­ter and Dad marched me into the sanc­tu­ary, and we took our places in front of a huge crowd that filled every pew on a hot-as-hell evening with sti­fling humid­i­ty and no air con­di­tion­ing. Sweat rolled down my back inside my starched white shirt as my broth­er took his place beside me as my best man. A col­lege class­mate, two friends from White Hall, Cindy’s sis­ter as the brides­maid, and three of Cindy’s friends walked down the aisle and lined up at the altar.

The organ­ist keyed the open­ing notes of Here Comes the Bride; the big dou­ble doors at the rear of the sanc­tu­ary opened; and Cindy and her dad stepped forward.

Cindy was radi­ant, beau­ti­ful beyond words, and she smiled when she saw me.

In that moment, I calmed down and a small seed of con­fi­dence took root inside me, des­tined to grow slow­ly, but steadi­ly, over the com­ing years.

Cindy’s dad walked her down the aisle, and she took my arm. Her hazel eyes shin­ing, she flashed that pix­ie grin I’d fall­en in love with the night we met, and we turned to face my dad.

He led us through the vows. “I, Ken, take thee, Cindy, to be my wed­ded wife from this day for­ward, to have and to hold, for bet­ter or worse, for rich­er or poor­er, in sick­ness and in health, in joy and in sor­row, to love and to cher­ish till death do us part.”

The tra­di­tion­al vows are archa­ic and old-fash­ioned, I guess, but they seemed right to me back then. They still do. And we’ve lived by them through good times and bad.

I kissed the bride and we walked down the aisle, out the big dou­ble doors, and on into the next fifty years.

June 20, 1969, to June 20, 2019, 600 months, 18,262 days, three chil­dren, six grand­chil­dren, count­less cher­ished memories.

A half-cen­tu­ry behind us. For­ev­er still to go.

On the morn­ing of April 10, a vis­i­tor to the home of Irwin and Alexan­dra Jacobs found them lying in bed, both dead from gun­shot wounds. They had lived for 40 years in their home on Lake Min­neton­ka in Min­neso­ta. High school sweet­hearts, they had been mar­ried for 57 years. They had five chil­dren and eight grandchildren

The med­ical exam­in­er deter­mined that Irwin shot Alexan­dra and then turned the gun on him­self. One of Irwin’s friends said Alexan­dra “had been in a wheel­chair for the last year or so and had signs of demen­tia. Irwin was … dis­traught over her condition.”

I’m still reel­ing from the news. I’d known Irwin Jacobs since 1983, when he made a bid for Kaiser Steel and hired me to eval­u­ate the company’s labor problems.

When he called me, I wasn’t sure I want­ed to rep­re­sent him. He was a high-pro­file “cor­po­rate raider” with a mixed rep­u­ta­tion. The busi­ness press dubbed him “Irv the Liq­uida­tor” for break­ing com­pa­nies apart and sell­ing off the pieces. Exec­u­tives, who feared he’d fire them if he gained con­trol, fought his takeover bids ham­mer and tong. In those bat­tles, he gave them no quar­ter. His ene­mies con­sid­ered him a no-holds-barred street fight­er, uneth­i­cal and at times lawless. 

Irwin’s hard­scrab­ble back­ground gave cred­i­bil­i­ty to the street fight­er image. When he was in grade school he worked for his father, a Russ­ian immi­grant who col­lect­ed old burlap bags from Minneapolis’s grain ele­va­tors, repaired them, and resold them. When Irwin was 18, he drove a truck­load of reclaimed bags past a burned-down ware­house and won­dered what had been done with the items stored inside. That inspired him to launch a busi­ness with his father’s help sal­vaging fire and flood-dam­aged goods. Those ear­ly expe­ri­ences taught Irwin “to throw noth­ing away” and “to look for val­ue where oth­er peo­ple did­n’t see it,” lessons that lat­er served him well in the dog-eat-dog cor­po­rate takeover arena.

In the 70’s, he pur­chased small under­val­ued com­pa­nies, often out of bank­rupt­cy, reor­ga­nized them, and sold them for big gains. Those deals fueled invest­ments in even larg­er com­pa­nies. He made runs at Pab­st Brew­ing, Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions, and Avco, sell­ing out to high­er bid­ders in each case. By 1983, this recy­cler of burlap bags with no for­mal edu­ca­tion beyond high school had accu­mu­lat­ed a net worth of $200,000,000.

When I met him, I saw no hint of the press’s shady char­ac­ter. Grant­ed, he was a lit­tle rough around the edges. His gram­mar wasn’t per­fect; he loos­ened the knot in his tie when he got excit­ed; and his shirt­tail wouldn’t stay tucked in. But I liked him from the out­set. A big man with a boom­ing voice, a win­ning smile, and a great sense of humor, his bound­less opti­mism was infec­tious. He want­ed an hon­est assess­ment of Kaiser Steel’s dis­putes with the Unit­ed Steel­work­ers.  I spent two months eval­u­at­ing those issues and gave him my con­clu­sions. Some­one came along and out­bid him, and he sold out.

I thought I’d seen the last of him, but the fol­low­ing year he hired me again, this time to con­duct an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of an LA based com­pa­ny he owned. A Texas lawyer alleged that the company’s in-house attor­neys made him pay them bribes for assign­ing him legal work. Through a con­vo­lut­ed scheme set up by the in-house lawyers, they paid the Texas lawyer back for the bribes with com­pa­ny funds so he didn’t lose out. The Texas attor­ney thought the company’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel (GC) was the mas­ter­mind behind the embez­zle­ment scheme, but he had dealt exclu­sive­ly with a junior in-house lawyer and had no proof of that. 

The fifty-year-old GC was a for­mer pres­i­dent of the bar asso­ci­a­tion and a pil­lar of integri­ty in the legal com­mu­ni­ty. Irwin’s com­pa­ny paid him a half-mil­lion dol­lar annu­al salary and he sat on its Board of Direc­tors. It seemed unlike­ly he would risk his career on a bribery scam, and there was no doc­u­men­ta­tion impli­cat­ing him.

When I ques­tioned him, he put up a good front and denied every­thing, but I thought he was lying. Sub­se­quent events con­firmed my sus­pi­cions and trig­gered an under­cov­er inves­ti­ga­tion run by the U.S. Attorney.

At the FBI’s direc­tion, I spent a week talk­ing with most of the company’s out­side attor­neys, ask­ing them if they’d paid kick­backs to get legal assign­ments. They all denied pay­ing bribes. Sev­er­al of them then called the GC in a pan­ic and made incrim­i­nat­ing state­ments on phone lines the FBI had tapped.

Mean­while, the junior in-house attor­ney, who had dealt with the Texas lawyer, agreed to coop­er­ate with the inves­ti­ga­tion in exchange for immu­ni­ty. In a taped meet­ing with the GC orches­trat­ed by the U.S. Attor­ney, he offered to take the fall for the kick­backs and keep the GC out of it for a $100,000 bribe. In a sec­ond taped meet­ing in Encino’s Bal­boa Park late at night, the GC hand­ed the junior attor­ney a paper bag full of cash. He sound­ed crazy on that tape, and he talked about doing harm to Irwin and me.

The next day, the GC snapped, bought a rifle at a Big 5, and holed up in his house. The FBI man­aged to take him alive, but the arrest­ing agents said that the rifle mis­fired and that he begged them to turn him loose and let him run so they could shoot him in the back. A sui­cide note in his pock­et blamed his trou­bles on “Irwin and his fleas.”

When the GC was released on bail, Irwin insist­ed on hir­ing round-the-clock body­guards for me. In hind­sight, I don’t think I was in any real dan­ger, but at the time I wasn’t sure and Irwin refused to take a chance, so for a cou­ple of weeks two big hulk­ing guys with guns were my con­stant companions. 

The GC even­tu­al­ly pled guilty. At his sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, big name lawyers filed let­ters attest­ing to his good char­ac­ter, and his defense attor­ney argued he should be giv­en pro­ba­tion and no jail time. When the judge sen­tenced him to five years in prison, he fainted. 

I worked with Irwin off and on for the next decade. I felt as close a bond with him as with any client I ever rep­re­sent­ed, but when I left the prac­tice of law in 1993, we lost con­tact. I was busy try­ing to help turn around a strug­gling com­pa­ny and I didn’t keep in touch. He bought an inter­est in the Min­neso­ta Vikings, and I saw him on tele­vi­sion in the own­ers’ box every so often. Each time, I thought about call­ing him, but I nev­er did. 

When the news of the mur­der-sui­cide broke on April 10, I hadn’t thought about him for a long while. Since then I haven’t been able to stop think­ing about him. 

He didn’t deserve to go out this way. He was gra­cious and gen­uine, a straight-up good guy, who was fun to be with, even in the most stress­ful times. His great­est joy was his fam­i­ly. He glowed when he talked about his kids, and he was par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of a grown daugh­ter who had cere­bral pal­sy. He bragged to me about her inde­pen­dence and how she lived and worked on her own.

He met his wife, Alexan­dra, when they were sev­en­teen, and he was crazy about her. An accom­plished stu­dio artist, she was his first and only love. 

Irwin’s friend said he couldn’t stand to watch her go away. Demen­tia is a cru­el descent into hell. I’ve lost three friends to it. I don’t know how their loved ones found the strength to con­front the unfath­omable heart­break and loss, but in each case they per­se­vered with hero­ic courage, sta­mi­na, and love. Irwin couldn’t do it. I won’t blame him or judge him for that. No one should.

I blame myself, though, for los­ing touch with some­one who meant a lot to me.

My prob­lems start­ed with a dog’s limp. Two years ago, our brindle pit bull’s back right leg was swollen and inflamed. In the exam­i­na­tion room, the vet post­ed an X‑ray on a back-light­ed screen and point­ed to shad­owy blotch­es around P.D.’s knee.

“The ACL has torn away from the bone,” he said. “He’s in a lot of pain, and it’s going to get worse.”

“Can you fix him up?” I asked, naively.

I wrote a check big enough to cov­er a month’s vaca­tion at a lux­u­ry resort in Maui, and the vet rebuilt P.D.’s knee. When they brought him out of the recov­ery room after his surgery, sta­ples were stitched over a deep cut along the length of his leg, but he didn’t seem to notice. He bound­ed across the room full tilt and jumped up on me, his tail wag­ging at hum­ming­bird-wing speed.

“He has to stay off that leg for six weeks,” the vet said, look­ing wor­ried. “No run­ning or jumping.”

“You’ve got to be kid­ding,” I said. “Look at him! He’s nuts!”

“You have to restrain him,” the vet said. “Two weeks in a cage. Four in a small room. If he ruins his new knee, we’ll have to oper­ate again.”

Back at home, Her­cules and Super­man, work­ing as a team, couldn’t have mus­cled P.D. into a dog cage. I gave up on it, set up his dog bed in my office, and locked us inside. Where­upon began the longest six weeks of my life. P.D. spent every wak­ing moment bat­ting around the room, bounc­ing off walls, and jump­ing all over me. It was like liv­ing in a clos­et with a kan­ga­roo on speed.

Twice he escaped into the back yard and bee-bopped up the hill to the fence-line before I could las­so him with a leash and drag him back to our jail cell.

Mirac­u­lous­ly, despite his best efforts to rup­ture his knee, he sur­vived the six weeks with­out blow­ing it out.

Three weeks lat­er, his back left leg went lame. Back to the vet. Anoth­er torn ACL and anoth­er big check fol­lowed by a sec­ond six weeks in Hell.

Dogs don’t blow out their front knees, so I thought we were done. I was wrong.

I was at the back door watch­ing Zoey, our Amer­i­can Bull­dog, walk lazi­ly across the yard, sniff­ing flow­ers. Sud­den­ly, she lift­ed her back right leg, yelped, and ran over to me, whining.

“Damned bad luck,” the vet said.

I wrote the now stan­dard big check and descend­ed into Hell again.

Two months after Zoey recov­ered, P.D. lodged a fox-tail in his paw that worked its way up inside his leg, requir­ing yet anoth­er surgery. I wrote the check and went back to jail.

After vet bills approx­i­mat­ing the annu­al gross domes­tic prod­uct of Alba­nia and sev­er­al months of con­fine­ment in a small space with a wild dog, a pru­dent per­son would back away from ani­mal hus­bandry. Me? I dou­bled down.

Hid­den Hills is zoned for hors­es. I grew up in a Vir­ginia farm com­mu­ni­ty and I still miss White Hall and Sug­ar Hol­low, so I start­ed con­struc­tion of a two-stall horse barn to remind me of home.

I bought a lit­tle red mare, Mar­garine. I board­ed her in anoth­er barn while mine was being built and hired a horse whis­per­er extra­or­di­naire as my barn man­ag­er. “Marge will need a com­pan­ion,” she said. “Hors­es are herd ani­mals. It’s cru­el to iso­late them.”

Lily, an Andalu­sian mare, was for sale in Lan­cast­er. To demon­strate to me that she was well-trained, the sell­er spurred her up and down his cor­ral, jerk­ing her sav­age­ly one way and then the oth­er, run­ning her at full speed and then near­ly rip­ping her head off to stop her on a dime. It was hard to watch.

Heart­break­ing­ly, when the horse whis­per­er inspect­ed Lily for phys­i­cal sound­ness, she saw that the sell­er had bri­dled her with a spade bit. A spade bit has a “spoon,” a flat plate that goes over the horse’s tongue and pro­trudes up inside its mouth. A skilled rid­er can use it to good effect. In a cru­el rider’s hands, it’s an instru­ment of torture.

I would have paid five times the ask­ing price to res­cue Lily from that guy, but the horse whis­per­er held me back. “Don’t reward his bru­tal­i­ty,” she said. “He just wants to get rid of her any­way.” She was right. I bid low and he caved in.

My barn still wasn’t ready, so we trail­ered Lily to the four-stall barn where Marge was board­ing. The first time Marge saw Lily, she laid her ears back flat and bared her teeth. We hoped Marge would get used to Lily over time, but her hatred only grew.

Mean­while, Lily fell in love with the geld­ing in the stall next to her. Every time we tried to sep­a­rate them, she had a ner­vous break­down. Although Lily’s roman­tic inten­tions could nev­er be con­sum­mat­ed (he’s a geld­ing, for Pete’s sake!), we couldn’t cure her sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety no mat­ter what we did.

Who­ev­er came up with the term “horse sense” obvi­ous­ly nev­er met a real horse.

By the time my barn was ready, Marge hat­ed Lily, and Lily was in love with a horse I didn’t own. The sen­si­ble solu­tion was to sell one of them and buy anoth­er horse for my sec­ond stall, but of course, I had fall­en in love with both of them by then and I couldn’t bring myself to let go of either one.

So in Bak­ers­field, we found Wil­son, a tall bay geld­ing with a docile, easy-going per­son­al­i­ty. I moved him and Marge into my barn and paid the board­ing fee to keep Lily at the oth­er barn where she could con­tin­ue to rub noses (and noth­ing else) with her neutered paramour.

Every­one was happy.

Until we turned Wil­son and Marge out into the cor­ral. They grazed peace­ful­ly togeth­er for almost an hour. Then, for no appar­ent rea­son, Marge began kick­ing the liv­ing crap out of Wil­son. Being For­rest Gump-like, it took him a while to fig­ure out he was under attack, but once the light bulb came on, he gave as good as he got. The horse whis­per­er hero­ical­ly jumped in between them and herd­ed them back into their respec­tive stalls.

“Cuts and bruis­es,” the vet said. “They’ll be sore for a good while, but they’ll be okay.” He cleaned and ban­daged their wounds, and I wrote yet anoth­er big check. (By the way, politi­cians who are con­cerned about income inequal­i­ty could learn a lot about redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth from the Nation­al Vet­eri­nary Association.)

Giv­en my equine predica­ment, a sen­si­ble per­son would sell Marge, but I still loved her despite her severe per­son­al­i­ty disorder.

So I called the fence man. “We’ll run a fence down the mid­dle of the cor­ral,” he said glee­ful­ly as he hand­ed me his estimate.

I swal­lowed hard and wrote the check. Marge stays on one side of the fence; Wil­son on the oth­er. Lily remains in the oth­er barn with eunuch-boy.

That’s it, I told myself. No more ani­mals. Enough is enough. No mas.

Until grand­daugh­ter num­ber three got excit­ed about chick­ens. We built a coop on the hill above the barn. One red and two whites. She named them Icy, Barb, and Faji­ta. Two days into it, Icy tried to kill Faji­ta, and Barb almost choked to death on a long piece of straw.

I know what you’re think­ing. A sen­si­ble per­son would draw the line, once and for all, at the chick­ens, but by now I’m a fatal­ist. I know it won’t work.

It’s only a mat­ter of time until, “Don’t you think goats are kin­da cute, Papaw?”