Alison Kamine and Bob Bloom, American University students whose romance bloomed in the tumult of 1969.
Booming's "Making It Last" column profiles baby boomer couples who have been together 25 years or more. Send us your story and photos through our submission form.
Alison Kamine and Bob Bloom met in 1969 as college students at American University, in Washington. They have been married 38 years. He works for WILD Flavors, a food and beverage flavoring company in Cincinnati; she is a retired educator. They have two grown children. A condensed and edited version of our conversation follows:
How did you meet? What attracted you to each other?
Alison: We met at a dorm mixer during our second semester of freshman year. I was not drawn to Bob; he pursued me.
Bob: I think the attraction was physical. She was so pretty, sitting there talking with a friend, and looked approachable so I approached.
Alison: I had a boyfriend at the time that I'd gone to high school with.
Bob: I didn't put myself out there with women very often, but I was attracted enough to get over my normal hesitancy. We talked from that point until they told us it was time to vacate the room.
The first date?
Alison: We hitchhiked from campus to a movie. It was during the day and a Porsche picked us up. We never really dated — it seems like we almost immediately started cohabitating.
Bob: This was all during the Vietnam War and about the time of the Kent State shootings. The day after the shootings, the students went out in protest and took over this traffic circle. Melvin Laird [then secretary of defense] drove by and we all surrounded his car. The D.C. riot police showed up and the next day they canceled school for the rest of the year.
Alison: When school shut down, that's when our relationship really blossomed. We had so much time.
So protesting was good for romance.
Bob: I'd just bought a car and we took off to Virginia Beach and worked our way up the East Coast and ended up at her parents' house in Long Island. I don't think I knew at that point that she still had her high school boyfriend, but we corresponded after I went home to Ohio for the summer. The relationship picked up with a new intensity in the fall when we got back.
Alison: We kept our separate dorms, but we cohabitated. My parents would not have approved. You know the saying: why buy the cow… Plus even though Bob and I are both Jewish, I'm from New York, so I am more culturally Jewish. He is from the Midwest, so their goal was to assimilate. They'd have Christmas trees and he didn't know any Yiddish. I think my parents were shocked and didn't believe he was Jewish.
Bob: After college we were living together, but her mom didn't care for that and cut off communication with Alison. I don't think it was about me in particular, but she was kind of controlling. It wasn't something either of us wanted to go on any longer and we decided to get married.
Did the differences in your Judaism affect your relationship?
Alison: We never argued over it. He loved visiting my grandma. Tasting all the foods; knish and rugelach. He had never heard of this stuff but he loved it. Though he did claim recently that when we lived in D.C. we had a Christmas tree one year, which I cannot remember and cannot imagine.
Bob: The Christmas tree was an outgrowth of the way I grew up and probably only happened one year and then we realized it was inappropriate.
The wedding?
Alison: We got married on neutral ground at the Kay Spiritual Life Center at American University. We did it in D.C. because my mother would have had no idea how to plan a wedding and his mother probably would have known too much about it. I wore a white pants suit that I bought in Georgetown and Bob wore this god-awful houndstooth suit. We were high the whole time. A friend of ours who went on to be a pro-photographer took our wedding picture. He stood on a table and the shot came out like this weird fish eye, which seemed very appropriate.
Bob: The rabbi who married us was my camp counselor and he later became the first openly gay rabbi in the States. We were the first couple that he married.
At what point did you decide to leave Washington?
Bob: We left in July of '76. We were tired of D.C. In Cincinnati people have roots; I never got used to the transient nature of D.C.
Alison: The war was impacting things a lot and it was intense living in D.C. We sort of had enough of inner city life. We hadn't bought a house in D.C., so we were free and easy to move. Bob went back to work at the family's food flavoring business where he'd worked during the summers.
When were your children born?
Alison: I was about 30 and he said, "You know, if we're going to have kids we should start thinking about that." And I said, "Oh, yeah, you're right!"
By ERIKA ALLEN 02 Mar, 2013
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/booming/married-38-years-and-he-says-she-is-never-wrong.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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