A love story, long-delayed but so sweet

     Two kids from the old neighborhood (Sunset Acres in Shreveport) found each other after 40-plus years and lived happily ever after (we hope).
     Two lives, two long and often difficult paths, with multiple  challenges -- especially for one since childhood -- and with joy and tragedy often mixed.

     It is a sweet story now, Leslie Bradford and Ronnie Anderson living together in Elon, N.C., for several years and hopefully many more to come.
     Leslie was the cute young girl down the street (Amherst Street), living on the corner the next block over with her parents and older brother Pat, a friend of ours.
     Ronnie was the endearing dark-haired little boy who a couple of blocks away on Sunnybrook, right across the street from Sunset Acres Elementary School.
     Surely, most everyone in Sunset Acres knew Ronnie, the big-hearted, sharp, pleasant, smiling kid wearing those heavy leg braces and dragging them along as he made his way on crutches. Polio, in the 1950s, was a scourge, and Ronnie was one most affected.
     He seemingly was always around, on the playground, at the school, often trailing older brother Lyn. He didn't let much stop him.
     He was unforgettable to some of us in Sunset Acres.
     And so, six decades later, here is his picture on Facebook -- a gray-haired, somewhat thick presence, and in a wheelchair, same great smile ... and the girl in the photo with him? Yes, the cute young girl from down the street -- Miss Leslie. Still a beauty ... and also with a great smile.
      They had known each other since second grade, but only as casual friends. They never dated.
      In the Woodlawn High years, "he was in his own [musical] band, and I was in the pep squad," Leslie says. "We did not really run in the same circles."
      Ronnie: "I probably thought she was out of my league. I never did ask her out ..."
       They'd gone their separate ways after high school graduation (Woodlawn Class of 1969) -- long roads for both -- but their 40th class reunion (yes, 10 years ago) was the starting point for this romance.
     We'd been tipped off to the story by my sister, their classmate all through school (elementary, junior high, high school) and Leslie's friend for all that time.
     We knew some of the details of her life. But whatever happened to Ronnie Anderson? Interesting to see on his Facebook page that he was -- and is -- quite the musician. 
     How did they end up together? Good story. Maybe it was fate.
---
     For Leslie, a marriage not long after high school graduation and quickly three children in three years. 
     Over the years, two other marriages (for a total of 25 years married), three divorces, five grandchildren; a variety of jobs; a first move from Shreveport to North Carolina (a husband's job transfer took them there); a move back to the Shreveport area to be near her aging and ailing parents (her kids stayed in Carolina); and then a move back to N.C. (for good) with her mother in her final years.
     Her final job: caregiver of an elderly woman for three years.
     "Loved working with the elderly," she says. "Learned a lot about Alzheimer's patients."  
     For Ronnie, surgery after surgery after surgery -- polio-related, then car wreck-related. So many trips in and out of Shreveport's Shriners Hospital, too many to count. Thus, many long breaks from school. 
     Finally, a guitar, an obsession ... and a life he never expected.
      A high school band, or two. A few college stops, a college stage band, a dropout for a musical career on the road, touring bands. The wild 1970s scene: drugs, drinks ... and issues. Back to school, a marriage (also unexpected, but one that lasted 32 years), three children, a career away from music, a divorce, a life adrift. But always still music at its root.
     "Ronnie has lived a more exciting life than me," says Leslie. "... He's had a colorful life."
     So, the Woodlawn Class of '69 reunion in October 2009, and here they were, each single, newly divorced. They had not seen each other in at least 15 years.
     Leslie had a date, but he was just hanging around at the bar. Ronnie Anderson, from Sunset Acres, was in the room.
     "I kept going back to talk with Ronnie that night," Leslie recalled. "And then we had a mutual friend [actually the woman Ronnie was dating at the time and had been Leslie's children's babysitter when they were very young] who told me that his birthday is February 27."
     The next February 27th (2010), Leslie called Ronnie to wish him a happy birthday.
     They enjoyed the talk, and "from that point on we talked almost every day," she said. (In fact, they had to change phone plans to accommodate the time accumulated.)
     "He made me fall in love with him over the phone. It's hard to have a long-distance relationship."
     "When we talked, it was always great," says Ronnie, and soon he made the trip from Shreveport to Elon, N.C., for a visit. "And when we got together, it got to be more and more of a thing."
     There was sentimentality involved, too. "I thought about all the friends I had made [from school days], and it was a good feeling," he says. "So to talk to Leslie and get to know her more seemed right."
     Over a year's time, the relationship grew to the point that Ronnie made the move to North Carolina and they became a couple.
     But a couple of years later, Ronnie's father became ill (cancer). At Leslie's urging, he returned to Shreveport to help care for his parents.
     "He was heartbroken," she says of her insistence that he leave Elon. "He thought I did not love him. But I felt he was more needed there at that time."
     In 2014, his parents died in an eight-month period. So did his ex-wife, long a sufferer with Crohn's disease and then pancreatic cancer.
     With that, he returned to North Carolina -- and Leslie. It had been a long road, but they think he is home.
---
     Ronnie, born in 1951, the second of four children (older brother, two younger sisters) was diagnosed with polio at 5 months old. His legs were underdeveloped, bent and crooked. As he grew, the braces and crutches became part of his walking process.
     His first operation was at age 4, at Shreveport's highly regarded Shriners Hospital for Children. Another operation, on his right leg, some three years later. A fusion of his left leg -- his knee and ankle, to hold the leg straight -- at age 15.
     Each time meant long stays at Shriners, time missing from Sunset Acres and school for months.
     "I would disappear for periods at a time, and when I would come back," he recalls, laughing, "kids would ask, 'Where have you been?' "
     The first time or two, in the mid-1950s, "when you are 4 or 5, that's pretty tortuous. I was horribly homesick." 
     Additionally, after surgery, "You could only see your Mom and Dad for an hour on Sundays, and no siblings were allowed. There was worry that the polio virus could spread to other kids."
     The left-leg fusion, at age 15, alleviated the use of a brace and "it was a real breakthrough." After that, he "could move around a little bit" without aid, to the point that participated in intramural tennis and even football (as the center).
     But even before that, his parents "were very good, very encouraging. They gave me no special exceptions. They told me I could do anything I wanted, to try anything I could." 
     By the time he was about 13, though, the Shriners' Hospital stays were not only a literal pain, but also a figurative one.
     He was, admittedly, "a handful." 
     "I was doing things like putting toothpaste on [other patients'] faces while they were asleep," he says. "All sorts of mischievous stunts. The doctors and nurses told my parents, 'You better straighten out your son, or he will have to leave.' "
     But by then, something -- a guitar -- had changed his life. His path was about to come into focus.
     "I'm there in the hospital, and I am so bored," he recalls. "I told my parents, 'If I have to build another model airplane, I am going to tear my hair out.' "
     It was a co-worker of his father's at Texas Eastern, an information technology person, who made the suggestion: Get him a guitar.
     The co-worker, Toney Morelock, could identify. He had polio in his upper body.     
     "It was an act of God," Ronnie says of the choice. "I was really hooked. Played it all the time, practiced it. I remember my parents saying, 'Put that thing down and come have your dinner. ... Put that thing down and do your homework.' "
      And he had a hero.
     "I really admired him," he says of Morelock. "He was the coolest guy in the world. He was one of the first people I knew who drove a Mustang. He was a bachelor, and he always brought a nice date to our house. I [eventually] pledged the same fraternity [Kappa Alpha] he was in. 
     "He was the coolest guy I knew, the Steve McQueen of my life."
     Ronnie's guitar prowess came quickly. "I found I could learn songs off the radio," he says, "and I could teach them to others. I could play them, and I could sing [decently]."
     Another young man in Sunset Acres showed him how to play honky-tonk standards and old blues numbers, his repertoire growing. And when he was about 13, the Andersons moved to Southern Hills and soon Ronnie was part of a band. "Jay and the Cavaliers" -- the Jay for leader Jerry Hartnoll -- practiced in living rooms and in garages.
     That evolved into "The Livin' End," a group that in the high school years played for school dances and formals in the city, and at area schools in Mansfield, Haughton, and fraternities at Louisiana Tech in Ruston.
     And, yes, they were paying gigs.

The Livin' End, late 1960s (that's Ron, back center)

     In May 1969, graduation time, The Livin' End played for an end-of-school graduation party for crosstown rival Byrd High students. Afterward, a cruise in a friend's new Chevrolet Nova ended with a collision with a telephone pole.
      For Ronnie, the memory was dimmed by a concussion, but he knew looking at his left foot turned all the way around, more surgery was imminent.
     That spoiled his plans to attend LSU-Baton Rouge. Instead, as he recovered, he enrolled as a freshman at LSU-Shreveport, then transferred to Northeast Louisiana at a sophomore, intending to major in government -- lobbying was a possibility -- and after earning a degree going to law school.
     His thinking was "I can't play the guitar forever ... but I found I really could."
     At Northeast, he wasn't a music major, but a stage band heard of his guitar talent and he was invited to audition, took his guitar and amp over and afterward was told, "These guys think you are what they want."
    All it required, as a non-music major, was for him to take six hours of music-related subjects a semester. Done, for three semesters -- "a real musical education," he said.
     In the middle of his junior year, he received an offer: Join a band going to Florida (and other places) to tour. His choice: He took the offer.
     "I left my vocational rehab scholarship, and I thought my Dad was going to kill me," he recalls. But he convinced Dad, who he said told him, "You better do it while you are young."
     "And I wanted to see if I could do it, make a living at it," Ronnie says. He wound up touring the country -- and beyond -- "with more bands than I could count."
     His favorite time: Touring, and playing guitar, with Claude King, the music legend best-known for his 1962 hit Wolverton Mountain, but whose early career and much of his life was Shreveport-based. (King died in Shreveport in March 2013 at age 90.)
      "We played in Canada forever," Ronnie recalls. "The people up there loved American bands, and we lived like kings."
      The connection for him was friendships with King's three sons, all musicians.
       Ronnie stayed on the road for most of five years -- "you built a reputation on the club circuit" -- but there was a side effect.
     The band culture, the constant travel, the pressures of performing nightly, the rowdiness ...
     "Naturally, Ronnie was exposed to the 'sex, drugs and rock 'n roll' of the 1970s," Leslie says. "He also felt that he was always responsible for the choices he made and had seen others destroy their lives with drugs.
    "Ten years ago, he stopped drinking. He says, 'I just outgrew it, I guess.' "
     In the mid-1970s, he headed for home, playing and singing solo around Shreveport (the River Company in Shreve Square), where he met a young woman from Bossier working there. 
     "I am a guy who said he was never going to get married," he admits, but it happened with Rebecca in 1976; he adopted her daughter.
     In 1979, he recorded an album, Easy Street, and spent time traveling and promoting it. "No manager, no bookkeeper," he says, and it "wore me out."
     Backing off his music career, he took a job at Arkla in Shreveport and, in a merger with Entex in Houston (as part of Reliant Energy), he and the family headed to Houston. His position: automated graphics. 
      But he had a studio at home; he kept playing and practicing his guitar and singing, and played weekend gigs. He began teaching guitar -- 20 to 25 students -- and took up playing the electric guitar, too. He also went to St. Thomas University and earned a degree in government and public relations.
       Into the late 2000s, his wife's health faltered, and so did the marriage. They wound up back in Shreveport-Bossier.
      Then came October 2009, the Woodlawn class reunion ... and the grown-up girl from the Amherst/Burke corner of Sunset Acres.   
---
     When he was at the Shriners Hospital, Ronnie thought "playing in a wheelchair was the most fun in the world." Now, with his legs worn out, it is an everyday presence -- although he can "furniture walk" -- and that's OK.
     "I can move around in it well," Ronnie says. "I still have great upper-body strength, so I can go where I need; we can go wherever we want to go." (Just as his parents had told him all those years ago.)  
     When he was 30 he began walking with a cane because his right leg was deteriorating. At 36, he fell and broke his hip, had hip replacement, and with a compound fracture in the left leg, he began using crutches ... again.
      Now, a problem is post-polio syndrome.
      "Your body wears out in weird ways," he says. "[With crutches] your walking on your hands practically. So I have lots of upper-body strength, but there are aches and pains in every joint, and there is nerve damage. Sharp pains, bone spurs, residual pains.
     "I am really fighting that in my hands, and that's hard because I want to keep playing [the guitar and his music]. I still try to play every day."
     So the music continues, and life is good in Elon, home of Elon University and some 40 miles from Chapel Hill, about halfway between Raleigh and Greensboro. Burlington is the closest town over.
     Leslie -- whose children now are 48 (Todd), 47 (Lisa) and 46 (Amy) -- and Ronnie live next door to one of the  daughters. 
      They share Leslie's grandchildren (ages 26 to 14) and there might be an Anderson grandchild yet in the near future (his adopted daughter Shelly is 47; daughter Brooke is 35; and Ron II is 33).  
       And they share their lives.
       "Not going to get married," says Leslie. "I've done that, and I'm not doing it again." Plus, there are financial reasons for not marrying.
      "But we wear bands that look like wedding rings," she adds, "and we are devoted to each other. Most of our friends up here think we're married because we do almost everything together.
      "I enjoy every day," Leslie says. "I love being retired."
     And she loves her companion. It's a mutual feeling, long-delayed.