Jerry King, maintenance man at Bernhardt’s Hardware, might remember Mary Hanford’s 100th birthday longer than anyone who went to her party Tuesday.
He didn’t go.
But he was out in his yard on East Fisher Street watching Rena Wilfong’s grandson, and after Rena got back, he stayed in the yard, watching that airplane circling overhead trailing a banner that said, “Happy 100th birthday, Mrs. Hanford ... Bob.”
Suddenly he heard sirens and looked up and saw police cars with blue lights flashing and a couple of other plain cars that he thought might be carrying Secret Service officers.
And they all stopped in front of his house, and a man rolled down a window and stuck his head out.
“Hello, neighbor,” he said, “come on to the party!”
“I’m not invited,” Jerry said.
“You are now,” the man said. “C’mon!”
And he rolled the window up, and the cars took off, lights flashing.
Jerry didn’t go to the party.
“I wasn’t dressed to go anywhere,” he says.
But for the rest of his life, he’ll probably tell people he got a personal invitation to Mary Hanford’s 100th birthday party from her son-in-law, former Sen. Bob Dole.
Oh, the stories about that party — surely, they will never end.
And one of them will be about a yellow envelope that disappeared.
Everybody was too busy worrying about the weather and Christian music stars Bill and Gloria Gaither, who were flying through it to Salisbury, to know they had a yellow envelope problem.
Liddy had invited the Gaithers to come and sing at her mother’s party on the spur of the moment.
“That’s what was playing on television when Bob and I arrived last Sunday,” she says, and it hit her. Nothing could make Mary Hanford happier than to hear the Gaithers.
So she found out where they were — and they said yes.
But Tuesday, when they were flying here from Indiana, the wind blew. The rains came. Their plane was diverted to Winston-Salem.
Quickly they rented a car and waited for it. Five minutes, 10 minutes, 15, 20.
They couldn’t make it. Quick. Get word to Mary Hanford’s grandson, Johnny, who was going on stage right then to read a poem, say a prayer and introduce the Gaithers, that they weren’t coming.
But the cell phone rang again. The weather had changed. They were in their plane, headed to Salisbury.
“Willard!” Liddy grabbed her old friend Willard Scott, “Get a note up there to John! Tell him they are coming!”
Who had a piece of paper?
Gia Colombraro, Liddy’s assistant, was holding a yellow envelope. She wrote a note on it, handed it to Willard — oh, it was all so confusing.
Johnny and Willard and Stewart McLaurin, Liddy’s chief of staff, were all on the podium to say — who knows exactly what they’d say?
It didn’t matter. They got here. They sang. The party was a stunning success.
But that envelope?
It was a card from Bob Dole’s daughter, Robin. Inside was a gift to the Red Cross’ Youth in Action program.
Has anybody seen a yellow envelope?
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