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| Conrad Frieze and Phyllis Sprague Frieze, December 2nd, 1972 |
1971
was a banner year for me because I met a lovely queen of my own who is now
Phyllis Marie Frieze and sharing the golden years of retirement. It was no coincidence that we met. For two years, I had been playing the ‘eligible
bachelor” bit on the Seattle scene including an extended affair with an
ex-secretary, then a succession of available women. My daughter Stephanie, who was now married and
soon made me a grandfather, did not like some of the women with whom I turned
up with. [In fact, I loved Penny, the Boeing secretary, but she had a little
boy and was considerably younger than my father. The last “girlfriend” that Dick and I went
out with him with was definitely a “broad”, not a lady and we went into panic
mode because he was lonely and likely to attach himself to her. We had a neighbor who was attractive and very
classy so we acted quickly.]
Stephanie
and her first husband, Dick Casey, lived in the Shorewood apartments on Mercer Island. They had a nice neighbor across the hall,
Phyllis Chilton, who was a divorcee. Stephanie
invited me to their apartment for my birthday dinner in March 1971 and asked me
specifically to come alone. She also
invited her neighbor from across the hall.
From
the moment Phyllis walked in that evening, none of the others had a
chance. Here was a slender, young-looking
(she turned out to be just three years my junior), brunette with a beautiful
smile. The “tender trap” snapped without
ever having been set and baited. We
thoroughly enjoyed dinner.
While
we were sitting, Phyllis with her back to the kitchen door where Stephanie was
swamping up dishes, Phyllis mentioned two sons, Barrett and Phillip. I innocently said, “Oh, you have two sons?”
Stephanie
appeared in the kitchen door and, behind Phyllis, waved her hands and held up
eight fingers just as Phyllis answered calmly, “No, I have six sons and two
daughters.”
At
that point I was ready to bolt and run like a rabbit until Phyllis went on to
assure me that all of her children were grown except for nine-year-old Phillip
who had come along several years after her other youngest [13 years to be
exact], Barrett. Only Phillip would be
living with her.
Phyllis
was unbelievable. After having and
raising eight children, she literally had the figure of a twenty-year-old. When we thanked Stephanie and Dick for dinner
and said goodnight, I went across the hall with Phyllis for a nightcap. When I left for my bachelor apartment in
Renton we had a date for dinner the next evening.
Phyllis
and I soon discovered that we had many things in common. For one, when I was in V-12 at the University
of Washington living at the Beta house, Phyllis Marie Sprague was a pledge at
the Chi Omega house just down the street.
(She allowed as how she had seen us at our morning calisthenics out on
the median and one in a while when we marched.)
We both enjoyed gold and much of our courtship was on golf courses. She was soon my partner on a bowling team and
she became a regular with me in Smitty’s fishing boat.
We
were both cautious, each having been through a divorce, and even tired to call
it off once for a while, however, we had a quiet wedding ceremony on December 2nd
, 1972. We spent a week of honeymoon
snowed in at Lake Tahoe—and me down in my back from having had to put chains on
the car on the way over the pass!
We
lived for a time at the Shorewood Apartments on Mercer Island, then, with Phillip
who had turned eleven, bought a house on the little Braeburn golf course
between Bellevue and Redmond. My world
travels continued but I did not like leaving Phyllis. Although, not being a Boeing vice-president I
had to pay her way, I did manage to take Phyllis with me to Hawaii, Mexico
City, and she joined me on one trip to Singapore where I tacked a week of
vacation onto a round the world trip so we could see the sights there and in
Tokyo on the way home.
[I am
happy to take credit for hooking my father up with Phyllis. She truly loved him for 29 years and kept him
at home even as he lay dying. She truly
was his queen and I am forever in her debt.
She remarried two years after his death, to a shipmate of my dad’s—another
sweet Midwest man, who has since passed.]
