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In the spring of 2000, I visited MPR’s classical music station, KWRV 91.9, in Sun Valley, Idaho for the first time.  When I made my second trip in the fall of that year, I decided to drive the rental car from Sun Valley to Bozeman, Montana and visit my ex-wife’s Uncle Bill and Aunt Maggie. 

Uncle Bill was Marcia’s mother’s half- brother. They both had the same mother, but different fathers.  I had met Aunt Maggie when Marcia and I went to California on our honeymoon in 1965. Aunt Maggie told stories about a Native American ghost that would visit her. He often sat on the end of her bed.  She also introduced me to stuffed grape leaves at the shopping mall. Going to visit Aunt Maggie and Uncle Bill became an annual event.  Each year I heard more marvelous stories and I learned to love those two wonderful people. Knowing that Marcia and I were divorced, Maggie would introduce me as her nephew from Minnesota and add:  “I got him in the divorce”. 

Uncle Bill passed in 2008.  It has been six years since Aunt Maggie passed. She and Bill Heisick both grew up in Bozeman, Montana. Here is just one of the many stories that Maggie told me.

Bill served in the Pacific during World War II. When he came home, he and his mother traveled to LA to visit some friends. One day a fellow named Ivan popped in to see his friend Tommy who happened to be playing bridge with Bill and his mother Mary. Ivan asked: “Who owns the car outside with the Montana license plates?”. Uncle Bill spoke up. Ivan, in a proud way, told Bill: “My girlfriend, Maggie Caven, lives in Bozeman. Please greet Maggie for me when you get back to Bozeman”.

When Bill got back to Bozeman, he phoned Maggie and asked her to go to a movie. Maggie mistook Bill for his older brother Bob who she had once met in high school. She accepted the date, and she was very disappointed when she found out that Bob had been killed in the war. Bill had gone to a different school, and she did not know him.

She was quite sure that Bill, who was a couple of years younger than she, was not her kind of fellow. Bill was very handsome. In fact, he could have doubled for Clark Gable.  Maggie was sure that like most handsome men, he would prove to be full of himself. She tried to call it off, but Bill was persistent, and they were married in Tucson, Arizona on April 12, 1949. They were a very happy couple. They lived in Van Nuys, CA and retired to a small ranch outside of Bozeman in 1984. She would introduce Bill as “Her SOB, Sweet Old Bill”.   I am not sure what happened to Ivan, but he shared too much information and it cost him dearly.

“When one door closes, another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us”.  Alexander Graham Bell