CHAPTER 1
I first met Marcia in the late 1970s. I was a foreman at Alabama Kraft Company, a division of Georgia Kraft Company. Alabama Kraft was a large and relatively new paper mill producing primarily substrate used in making beverage packaging. During a staff meeting one morning, the superintendent announced that the lady who was in the department clerical position was transferring to human resources and her replacement was going to be a lady from the accounting department named Marcia Lee. He made it very clear Mrs. Lee was a devout Christian lady and warned us there would be no profanity or dirty jokes allowed in the office complex whenever she was present. We had a lot of sales representatives who called on us as well as service technicians, and some were rather loud, told jokes, etc., when visiting in the office. He said he would be sharing this same information with those outside people, and we should ensure everyone abided by these rules.
Since all the foremen worked shift work, each of us was only working the day shift one week a month. Also the foremen had a separate office, and we were only in the department office sporadically bringing reports from time to time. I met Mrs. Lee the first time I was working day shift after she came to the department. She was nice looking, very quiet, and reserved and seemed like a nice lady with a lot of class. At that time we were upgrading many of the paper machine systems to newer technology, and some training was going to be required including the use of computers, etc. Within a few months, I was reassigned from my duties as a paper machine foreman and assigned to be project manager for a new formal training program for the paper machine operators. In the past, all training had been OJT (on-the-job training). I was told I would be developing the material in conjunction with a professional training company, and I would be dedicated to this project for at least three years and would no longer be involved in the everyday production and operation of the paper machines.
My new office was in the main administration building next to the plant manager's office; however, I spent a lot of time between there and the paper mill office doing various interviews, etc., developing the training material. During this time, I got to know Mrs. Lee better, and she was assisting me with some of the clerical type work. This was working fine, but within a year, there was an opening in the technical assistant superintendent position, and the superintendent met with me and told me he wanted me to take that job because he was going to be retiring in a few years, and I needed to be getting prepared to step up into his position. This was an opportunity I could not afford to pass up because it was a great step in preparing for my advancement in the company. Needless to say, I wound up with the technical assistant position but also retained the training manager job. I was putting in a lot of extra hours as well as working most Saturdays. I was depending on Mrs. Lee to do more and more work for me, which was actually above and beyond her job description and responsibility, but she never complained or said she didn't have time to do whatever I needed. Mrs. Lee's direct supervisor approached me and said he knew I had a hectic workload and was putting in a lot of extra hours, and Mrs. Lee was spending some time doing extra work for me. He said Mrs. Lee's husband was out of work, and if I needed her to work overtime to assist me, he was sure she would appreciate the opportunity to make the extra money. I talked to her and reviewed with her some work I thought she could do for me with just a little training. She was willing to assist in any way she could and appreciated the chance for any overtime. I was surprised how fast she learned how to process the material. Afterward she worked late quite often as well as worked occasionally on Saturday, and I came to realize she was a very intelligent lady and learned the training material quickly. She understood the material enough she became qualified to proofread a lot of the material we were putting together with operators we had selected as SMEs (subject matter experts).
In the mideighties, a decision was made to expand our plant that would double it in size. The superintendent whom I reported to decided at his age he didn't want to tackle a project of that size and announced his plans to retire. This was in the spring of 1986, and when he retired, I was promoted to paper mill superintendent. During the next couple of years, I was completely absorbed with the expansion, traveling, sometimes international, conducting pilot plant trials, engineering meetings, etc. During my absences, I would have a replacement doing the basic parts of my job, but a lot of the behind-the-scenes work continually got behind. With a short period of training, Mrs. Lee was invaluable in taking care of a lot of the things I would normally do when I was there.
A little background about my situation. My marriage had been good early on, but my wife and I had married when I was only nineteen; money was short, and we lived week to week. I was working in the technical department in a textile plant at that time. I worked every opportunity of overtime trying to keep my head above water. In 1957 I went back to school four hours a night, three days a week to further my education in an effort to get a better job. In 1961 there was an expansion at the Georgia Kraft Company paper mill in Rome, Georgia. I applied and got a job in the technical department. I later transferred to the paper machine department to make more money and a better chance for advancement. In 1966 we built the mill in Alabama and I was transferred there, so we relocated to Columbus, Georgia. My wife was from a very large family and never really got acclimated to moving 150 miles away from her mother, five sisters, and six brothers. She went back to Rome quite often and spent a lot of time visiting with her family. As our children got older and started moving out, our marriage deteriorated.
As mentioned above, my marriage of thirty-five years had been on shaky ground for some time, and my being away from home so much tied up with work and traveling extensively did not help those matters. Being totally involved with the expansion including engineering meetings, inspection of machinery as it was built, etc., necessitated that I made fourteen trips to Europe and Scandinavia during an eighteen-month period. In the fall of 1988, my father passed away, and a week later, I was served with divorce papers. Our divorce was finalized in late 1989. The expansion of the plant was completed and began startup operation in the fall of 1990. At that time, I was promoted to paper mill manager being responsible for about half of the plant including the finished product. A change was also made in the supporting staff groups, and Mrs. Lee became the paper mill department secretary reporting directly to me. This was in the fall of 1990, and I also acquired the responsibility of being one of the customer representatives for our seven European converting plants. This duty entailed my attending a quarterly plant managers' meeting in the suburbs of Paris, France. Mrs. Lee, whom I now called Marcia, took care of many extra duties in my absence.
Sometime in late 1991 or early 1992, one of our suppliers approached me and said he had overheard Marcia talking to someone in the office that the coming weekend was her wedding anniversary. He said since she did such a good job keeping him informed about scheduled outages, etc., and hunted him down when we had unscheduled downtime, he would like to make arrangements to treat her and her husband to a weekend in Atlanta if that was OK to do. Although that was kinda shaky as far as company policy was concerned, I told him to do whatever he'd like, and I didn't know anything about it. Later that afternoon, Marcia came in my office and told me what he had offered and said the supplier had said he had cleared it with me. I just told her for them to go and have a good weekend.
Our plant was located a little over halfway between the Columbus, Georgia/Phenix City, Alabama, area and Eufaula, Alabama. I lived in Phenix City and all, but one of my staff lived in Eufaula. It was rather common for salespeople to invite our staff group to dinner on occasion, and since I lived thirty-five miles north of the plant and almost everyone else lived twenty-five miles south, we usually dined in Eufaula. I had a houseboat docked at Lakepoint Marina just north of Eufaula, and I stayed at night on it quite often, especially if we had a group dinner in Eufaula or when we had problems at the plant and I worked late. After having gone through a bad divorce in which no one wins, I had sworn off ever being involved with another female. My career was my work and my hobby, and I was totally dedicated to it and content to remain a bachelor for life.
Marcia and her husband were always invited when we went out in Eufaula. They seemed to have an ideal marriage and looked to be head over heels in love. I had often looked at them and wondered why my marriage had not turned out that way. A few weeks after the Atlanta weekend, Marcia came into my office and asked if I had time; she needed to talk to me. She asked if it was OK if she closed the door. The first thought that came to my mind was that someone had upset or been ugly to her and she needed me to straighten it out. That had happened a couple of times before. She sat down in the chair across from my desk normally used when I was talking to salespeople, negotiating prices, service, etc. She said there was something I was going to hear, and she wanted me to hear it from her before it got all over the plant in the news and rumor mill. She was looking down at the floor and after a long pause said, "My husband and I have decided to get a divorce." At first I thought maybe this was a joke or something, but when she looked up, there was a big tear running down her cheek. It was then I realized she was serious, and the shock of what she had just said was such a surprise I was speechless. After what seemed like an eternity trying to absorb the situation, all I could come up with was "Is there anything I can do for you?" She said no and that it was going to be the talk of the town, and she just wanted me to hear it from her before I heard it from someone else. She then got up and left the office.
After I had a few minutes to think, it dawned on me I had really not reacted as I probably should have and offered more support, as she was very upset and distraught, but I was totally shocked because that hit me as a complete surprise. Her office was adjacent to mine, and there was a door between them that anyone wanting to see me had to check with her to see if I was available. I waited a short time trying to get my thoughts together then went to her office and asked if she would like to talk. She came back into my office, and I told her I wasn't trying to be nosy, but if she wanted to talk about it, I certainly would be supportive in any way I could. She just told me they had been having a lot of problems for an extended period of time, and when they were in Atlanta, things got really bad, and she asked her husband what she could do to make him happy, and he simply said, "Give me a divorce."
A year or so passed, and I no longer had the training project, the expanded plant was running well, and although I still had the quarterly meeting in France, I was not having to put in anywhere near the extra hours as I was before. In fact, I had a lot of time with nothing to do at night and on weekends, and I started getting lonely and bored. Since both of us were single and I had grown to really respect her intelligence, her sense of knowing how to handle things, and just her personality in general (not to mention that she was a good-looking lady with a lot of class), I started wondering if there was a chance she might be interested in going out to dinner sometime. I knew both her children were off in college and she lived alone, but I was sixteen years older than her and probably not the type she might be interested in, but I thought, What the heck! I met with the vice president/general manager and the manager of manufacturing technology, the two to whom I reported, and asked if there would be a problem as far as company policy was concerned if I asked her out to dinner. I was not aware there was any policy about that, but I wanted to check. Both said it was not a problem for them and wished me luck.
The following Friday afternoon just before she left for the weekend, I got up the nerve and nonchalantly asked what she was doing Saturday night. She replied, probably rent a movie and get a pizza as she usually did. I asked if she would like to go out to dinner, and she said, "Who in the world is in town on the weekend?" thinking it was a salesperson taking the group out. I told her no one, I was asking if she'd like to go to dinner with me. She thought for a minute and said, "Are you going to get in trouble if we do that?" and I told her I had already cleared it with the top brass. She thought another few seconds then said, "Sure, why not?" As mentioned before, we lived sixty miles apart, so we went out that time in Eufaula, which was a relatively small town and had few choices of restaurants. During the next several months, we went out occasionally to nicer restaurants in Columbus, Georgia, and the surrounding area and developed a close bond. As time progressed over the next several months, we developed a lot of mutual respect and realized we had a lot in common. To make a long story short, during about a year and a half's time, our bond developed into a very strong love and respect as to what we each wanted and needed in life. We became engaged then got married on September 30, 1994.
Shortly after we started dating on a regular basis, Marcia told me all she ever wanted in life was someone to love her like her daddy did, no holds barred and no strings attached. Her father had a massive heart attack and passed when she was only nine years old. She had been a "daddy's girl" and loved him with all her heart and soul. Losing her father was a traumatic experience she had never gotten over. She said for a long time after her daddy passed, she used to sit on top of the house to talk to him so she could be closer to where he was. She got married at the early age of sixteen and had hoped she would get that kind of love she had searched for, but it never materialized. I couldn't imagine anyone not being able to love her like that because the more I gave her, the more she returned at least twofold. Needless to say, when I proposed marriage and she accepted, I considered myself the luckiest man in the world, and after we were married, the life I had with her far exceeded anything I had ever expected.
Married life with Marcia was so absolutely great, there are just no words that could adequately explain it. We just seemed to jell together in everything we did. Of course, there were some things in which our interests varied, but we both tried to support the other even in things one of us might have no interest. A good example was I had been an avid NASCAR fan since I was very young. In fact, I did some dirt track racing with some of the guys who eventually made it to the big time. That was back in the days when we ate pork and beans on the tailgate of a pickup truck and stayed broke all the time. I got married when I was nineteen, and that put the brakes on my racing career. Many of the suppliers I did business with were also NASCAR fans and provided us with tickets and/ or accommodations to a lot of the races. Marcia would go with me and sit and read a book while the race was going on. After going to several races, she told one of the guys who arranged these outings that the hottest she had ever been, the coldest she had ever been, and the wettest she had ever been were at NASCAR races, and I could go to races anywhere and anytime I wanted but to count her out; she would stay home and watch it on TV. Due to our age difference, we also had different tastes in music, fashion, etc., but it never caused a problem. In fact, most people find it hard to believe, but in our two years of dating and being engaged, then nineteen years and three days of marriage, we never had a serious argument or disagreement.
