By 1995 he was retired from the service and a widower again. His second Mary Alice died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. A year and a half later, Mrs. Conway’s husband died of heart attack. The general swiftly wrote her a condolence letter.
General O’Connor had kept photos of her in a drawer at home, but rarely looked at them. He didn’t need to. He vividly remembered her. “Love never fails,” he said. “I really believe that.”
Months later she and her sister, Helen Maher, invited General O’Connor to a family party in Florida. “It was like we never left off,” Mrs. Conway said. Her sister commented: “They have both weathered many storms and always had fidelity and faith and focus.”
He began flying east to see her.
“We had done what we had to do with our lives,” she said. “Now, we had the chance to concentrate on each other again,” she said. She describes their relationship as much freer now, “a magic slate” upon which they can “write anything they want.
They became inseparable. “If I’m not with Jeanne, I feel like I’m just waiting to be back together with her,” he said. “It’s that kind of relationship.”
On Nov. 24, in chilly-yet-sunny weather, the couple were married at the Roman Catholic Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on the Upper East Side. It was a ceremony much like one they might have had in the 1950s. Guests in flip hairdos and wingtip shoes sang “Amazing Grace.” The bridegroom wore his uniform out of nostalgia because that’s what he always wore when they first dated. When the church doors opened after the ceremony, it was strange to see 2007 Hummers and taxis roaring by.
“My philosophy is, this was always meant to be,” the bridegroom said a few days before. “This was the girl of my dreams, the girl I had on a pedestal when I was a young man.” He added, “It’s as if the greatest dream you ever had finally came true.”
Read it all. So wonderful.
I know a couple whose story is very much like this one. They had been in love when they were young but both had gone on to marry other people. His wife died some years back. A few years later when he learned her husband had died he called her up. They were married not long afterward. Our small town was a bit scandalized by how short a time after her husband’s death it was, but at 90 years young we couldn’t help but cheer them both on.