“Start your engines,” we’re back in town. The place where it all started, this marriage of now 17 years. I’m sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office next to the building where I worked for 3 years at WIBC radio, my first Indy job. My wife-to-be was just 70 blocks south on Meridian Street at an advertising agency. I first met her as part of a impromptu negotiating committee trying to counter a rate increase I was proposing for Coca-Cola. At the time, I was working for WMEE/WQHK radio in Ft. Wayne, Indiana and made frequent trips to Indy to work on similar Regional accounts. I was eventually recommended for the WIBC job, and moved my family to take the position in May of 1985.

 

Three years later, I was offered a similar sales position at WISH-TV after an initial rejection. The move from radio to TV changed my life dramatically, as I unknowingly moved into the very neighborhood where I was born and adopted in 1951. Several years later, I divorced and remarried the Coca-Cola girl that I once negotiated against. She had also taken a job at the same TV station, and this ultimately brought us together. It was also my time at WISH-TV that earned me the lifetime pension that currently supplements my retirement income.

 

As I look back on the 18 years at WISH, followed by 5 more years with the same company in other cities, I feel a grateful bond with Indianapolis. This afternoon I’ll be getting together with several people whose friendships were woven in the fabric of working for, under, with, and over through the years. As younger men, they have yet to retire, and we’ve had our ups and downs, but we’ll be forever connected through WISH-TV. Each of us has ironically married a co-worker, so there’s undeniably been a lot of “fishing off the company pier.” We’ve also known each other’s wives before and after our marriages took place, and each of them knows my former wife. It’s quite a web we’ve spun!

 

There’s lots of family and friends in Indianapolis, along with former homes and workplaces. My wife’s ex-husband still lives here and all of our kids attended Indianapolis schools. My wife also graduated from Butler University in the city, along with one of her daughters. We’ve attended concerts, plays, and graduation ceremonies involving our children, as they grew up in the city. Both my wife and I came from smaller towns in Indiana and somehow found our way to the big city to raise our separate families, and to forge a new one in our love. Indianapolis became home, and it’s great to return to the place that brought us together.