I met a new friend for lunch yesterday. It’s a rather unusual, sweet story. For that reason, I need to write about it.
About three months ago, a young reporter sent me a message via my contact page. He saw a nostalgic piece I wrote about my college years at the University of Missouri.
It included a reference to Hinkson Creek and an abandoned quarry there, which I and many other college freshmen and freshwomen frequented on Friday nights to swim and party.
Apparently, the creek is now polluted–has been for more than thirty years–with an array of contaminants, but there is a push by various environmental groups to salvage it.
In his note, this earnest reporter–a journalism student at the same university I graduated from in 1979–wanted to talk with me to include a few comments about my recollections of Hinkson Creek. He wanted to give the story some texture and a touch of humanity.
As background, I don’t always respond to these sorts of messages. Too many of them are generated by bots or feel exploitive. But this one felt different. So, I responded.
A few days later, we had a pleasant phone conversation. I shared information about the fun I had with friends at Hinkson Creek in the mid 1970s and how sad it was for me to learn that Hinkson Creek is now unsafe due to the presence of E. coli in the water (according to data on the EPA website).
Before I said goodbye to the reporter, he told me how ironic it was that I lived in the Phoenix area, because he would be moving to the Valley of the Sun in July to be with his partner. I suggested he contact me again once he got situated here.
Last week, I received a text from this young man, this recent Mizzou journalism graduate who is forty-eight years younger than me.
He now lives in Phoenix and is looking for a writing job here. He included a link to the story he wrote which appeared in the Columbia Missourian with a few quotes from me.
It’s a thorough, well-researched story, but that’s not the point of my story.
Anyway, I thanked him for sending the link to me. He asked if I was still interested in meeting for lunch. I responded with a definite YES.
Yesterday afternoon–one day before the rain finally arrived to ease our parched earth here–we met in person.
This smart, enterprising, young gay man and I talked about his job search, my writing and my husband’s passion for films, how he and his partner met, his love of writing and music, his early impressions of Phoenix, and my recommendation that he find his place in the LGBTQA community here.
I told him that at this point in my life it is especially meaningful for me to help a younger man–a young gay man–by offering a little guidance in a harsh world.
He smiled when I told him I would pick up the check and–before we parted ways, but after I invited him and his partner to come to the next Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus concert in December–he said jokingly that meeting me is kind of like having an “elder gay” to talk with.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t want to be referred to as an “elder” anything. But in this case, it was a term of endearment. So, I laughed and accepted it that way.
***
My wise, sassy, and “elderly” Aunt Thelma once told me when she was in her late sixties, and I was about this young reporter’s age, that “we are all like ships passing in the night.”
I have always taken that to mean that life is fleeting, and that we should try to help each other around every turn. That we should try to do the right thing, because we never know what tomorrow may bring.
I think Thelma would have been proud of me yesterday.
Who could have imagined that a story about a polluted creek would lead to a pleasant lunch?
More important, that I might reach forward to help a young gay man, while looking back to remember that unrealized twenty-one-year-old-gay version of me who most certainly would have loved a little advice from an “elder gay” friend.
As a kid of the 1960s and 70s, I knew I was not like the other boys. It didn’t mean I was special. It just meant I was different.
While I was more verbal, intuitive, and sensitive than most boys at ten, twelve, fourteen, and so on, I didn’t have the language, understanding, or role models to help me explain how I was different.
Instead, I craved the word games and visual puzzles in Highlights magazines in doctor and dentist office waiting rooms, which prompted me to find the differences–the missing pieces–among a pageful of images.
All the while, I subverted my attractions for other boys–my genuine feelings for other people in general–to conform with the suburban norm. I didn’t dare to be different, but I always admired the kids who did.
Decades later, I’m comfortable in my body. As a visible member of the LGBTQ+ community in the Phoenix metropolitan area, I have no difficulty wearing goofy socks, pastel colors, or bold rainbow-colored sneakers.
During the first half of May, I captured these ten photos of items close to home that caught my attention or grabbed my interest. Each is beautiful in its own way. The final one–like me–is clearly not like the others.
As the summer heat settles in here in Scottsdale, Tom and I will apply our Scooby-Doo sunshade (replacing the plain old silver one we bought nine years ago) to the windshield of our Hyundai Sonata whenever we park our vehicle under flaming blue skies.
It’s our way of protecting ourselves (and our hands when we reenter our sedan and grab the steering wheel), while telling the world it’s okay to remember the light-hearted moments of our past lives … to be playful no matter our age … to take pride in being different in these Sixty-Something Days.
Be forewarned. This is not a story about the 1967 British drama film starring Sidney Poitier.
Though as background, in a riveting performance, Poitier portrays Mark Thackeray, an unemployed Black American engineer who takes a teaching job in a working-class London school.
Thackeray clashes with a band of rowdy high school students. Along the way, he challenges their prejudices, navigates social barriers, and–ultimately–earns their respect with innovative teaching methods.
It’s a profound story about the challenges of educating through discrimination. In the end, we viewers feel the emotional triumph of Thackeray’s accomplishment and are treated to Lulu’s rousing rendition of the title song.
If you’ve never seen the iconic film, I recommend it. Few films are more reminiscent of the sights and sounds of the turbulent 1960s.
But what I really want to write about today is the labels we use to address one another, and how those monikers change as we age.
This morning, as I finished a thirty-five-minute set and dismounted a treadmill at the Scottsdale Community College gym, a fortyish man exercising behind me smiled and announced with kindness (not love), “Sir, you’ve dropped something.”
I glanced down to discover my Silver Sneakers membership card lying on the floor next to the treadmill. I thanked him profusely, picked up the card, then proceeded to wash down the machine with a disinfecting wipe.
This experience gave me pause. At this stage of life (my late sixties) I am most often addressed as “sir” in situations like this with strangers in public forums. Certainly not, “young man”. Because I am not that.
I am certainly no longer a “boy” either, even though I definitely identify as male (he/him) and an elderly neighbor refers to my husband Tom and me as “the boys”. (She has known Tom since he was a “boy” visiting his grandfather.)
Anyway, I suppose I am “sir” to the outside world as I approach my sixty-ninth birthday in July. Better than “Hey You!”, it’s a respectful, somewhat formal, fatherly (dare I say grandfatherly even if I am not one) acknowledgement of who I am and who I have become in my older-and-sorer-but-still-relatively-fit body.
But I hope you’ll always refer to me as “Mark”, that generally kind, friendly author and gay man who is doing his best to stay sane in this dystopian country by writing about our everyday happenings that fly under the radar.
This is my space, but I feel it has eluded me lately in the blur of life.
Like the game of Chutes and Ladders, in this month of April I’ve moved forward a few paces–writing another meaningful libretto for the next Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus concert, Broadway Lights, in late June–while sliding back to heal from physical and emotional setbacks: two discomforting dermatological surgeries; one momentous funeral for a close cousin.
Grief has a mysterious way of throwing you into another orbit. That is where I live and breathe right now. Part of me stands on the sandy soil of Scottsdale, Arizona. Another piece is spinning somewhere else in the stratosphere.
The loss of Phyllis cut close. Not only because I loved her. But because I know she loved me. And she was a significant part of the fabric of my young life in her proximity to others I loved. Others we loved. All of whom are gone.
Our grandparents, Albert and Louise. Her mother, Violet. My father, Walter. My mother, Helen. Our aunt, Thelma.
Despite my disrupted and sometimes traumatic home life in the 1960s–featuring my father’s bipolar swings and my mother’s evening coping mechanism behind the broadsheet of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch–love existed there in our suburban St. Louis house. Love I felt. Love I excavated. Love I salvaged and carried forward. Love I still feel today.
Phyllis appeared in our home a few times a year. Usually in July to celebrate my birthday in our big backyard and in December in our living room to share Christmas dinner and exchange gifts. She was an integral presence in those moments.
There is one other moment that was purely ours. It happened just once. She must have been twenty. I was ten. She was an undergrad at the University of Missouri in St. Louis (UMSL). We both loved sports. She invited me to join her at an UMSL Rivermen basketball game.
I don’t remember much about it … how we got there, what we said to one another … just that we sat side by side in the stands rooting for the Rivermen. I just remember being proud of her. She was pretty, smart, and fun … and she wanted to spend time with her young cousin. It touched me deeply
As I write this, I realize Phyllis represented a form of stability in my life at that time … an escape to a more even, peaceful place that no one in my family of origin could provide.
Identifying that helps me to realize why this loss has hit so hard.
***
On Wednesday, April 22–Earth Day–my husband and I attended a volunteer recognition event at the Scottsdale Public Library. Alexa, the supervisor of volunteers, recognized Tom for his outstanding-and-popular movie series–and then me for my memoir-writing workshops–at the library in 2025.
We each brought home a certificate, thanking us for our volunteering efforts, along with a tiny succulent plant bearing an important message. We placed both of them on the windowsill of our south-facing sunroom in Scottsdale.
They will serve as a reminder for me that–even in my late sixties–I’m helping others grow in my community.
I know Phyllis, a life-long educator, valued that, too.
Back and forth from one end of the pool to the other on this hotter-than-average, magnificent March morning. March 24, 2026, from 9:00 to 9:30 a.m. to be precise. Thirty lengths in the deep end of Eldorado Pool in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Somehow, I wrangled my own lane today. I don’t mind sharing but always feel freer on unobstructed Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are fewer swim-class participants to contend with on those days and–now that the Cactus League baseball games have ended–some of the snowbirds have begun to flock home.
Breathing every eight or ten strokes, looking over my right shoulder, swimming south to north, I spy the blazing sun that threatens my sensitive skin and the wispy-white contrail of a commercial plane flying high above.
Serendipitously, the repetitive swimming motion reminds me what I want to write about today. It is the tenth anniversary of publishing my first book: From Fertile Ground.
On March 24, 2016, Barack Obama was president. I didn’t imagine the waves of what was to come: the growing political insanity, the dismantling of once-reliable American institutions, the general implosion of our democracy in one decade. Who could?
Back then, Tom and I were snowbirds–splitting time between our homes in Mount Prospect, Illinois, and Scottsdale, Arizona.
I wrote most of my inaugural book–a three-generation writer’s mosaic about love and loss in my family–from the suburban flatness of northern Illinois.
But working online–back and forth like a swimmer logging laps between my editor and book designer in Nashville, Tennessee, and me in Scottsdale–I made my final edits in the rugged western landscape of the Grand Canyon State.
I remember the pride of holding the first physical copy of my first book later that week. I know I cried. It was a release of joy and amazement. Most definitely, a seminal moment I shared with my husband.
Sadness crept in, too, because I had written the book to process my grief after my mother’s passing. In a physical sense, I wasn’t able to celebrate that literary moment with her.
But I also know that writing about her and her wisdom-filled letters, my father and his unrealized poetry, my grandfather and fifty-three years of diary entries, and the general sense of freedom I felt visiting my grandparents in the 1960s at their rambling North Carolina farm allowed me to create a healing path out of my grief.
It was–and still is–a story I was meant to write and publish. One I wanted to share with others navigating the devastation of grief.
In the past ten years since From Fertile Ground was born, writing has become that free, unbridled swimming lane that is purely mine. Welcome waves of water and creativity running from my mid-fifties to my late sixties.
Of course, I take pride in that body of work and–more recently–find it tremendously gratifying to share what I have learned with other writers, who need an experienced coach … and a few practical ideas … to tell their own stories.
Today, I also pause and wonder–with a touch of sadness as I write this–how many more stories lie ahead for me. Though I still feel strong, capable, creative, and alive in these golden years swimming back and forth under the Arizona sun, I also feel more vulnerable.
Part of it is the process of aging. The other is the narrowing swim lanes of American society that constrain freedom and the expression of ideas.
Having said that, I choose to end this story on a positive note. Today, I choose to relish the goodness of my life with Tom in this rugged landscape. To give thanks for all the stories that have come from fertile ground over the past ten years … as well as those I have salvaged from the depths of the pool looking over my shoulder to beloved people and places that now live on the page.
Back in the early 1960s, Mom plucked two mounds of dough out of our Philco refrigerator.
She plopped them on the kitchen counter to let them soften and warm to room temperature, then pulled her rolling pin out of the cupboard.
Diane and I took our places on either side of her, holding our primitive cookie cutters. Grey. Flimsy. Metal.
One was a simple star. The second, a classic Christmas tree. The third, a basic bell. The fourth, a reindeer in flight. The last one, a profile of Santa Claus carrying a pack of toys.
Further down the counter, two slightly bent cookie sheets waited, along with green and red sugar sprinkles we would soon shake above our freshly formed Christmas cookies.
But, in this gauzy 60s slice of life featuring baking, rolling out the dough had to come first.
Mom reached into her container of flour and tossed a handful on the counter. Then, dusted the wooden roller with the remains.
She leaned in with the rolling pin and pressed the dough. Back and forth with equal measures of love. The surface expanded with our hearts and imagination.
We took turns dipping the cutters into the flour, creating our shapes in the dough.
Then, we lifted them carefully with a spatula onto the cookie sheets, added the sprinkles, and slid them into the oven for eight to ten minutes.
While the first batch of cookies baked, Mom gathered the bits of dough that remained. She created a smaller ball and flattened it out with the roller. Together, we repeated the process.
It was 1961. I was four years old. Diane was seven. We felt loved, safe in the presence of our mother.
***
Earlier this week, I found one green Christmas cookie cutter in our kitchen drawer here in Arizona. It was a gift from our friend Jillian a few years ago, but I hadn’t made sugar cookies from scratch since those early days in suburban St. Louis with my long-gone mother.
Tom and I bought a wooden rolling pin, and I found an easy sugar cookie recipe online. I assembled the ingredients to make the dough: butter, sugar, flour, one egg, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a dash of salt.
I mixed it all together and let the dough settle in two large discs in the fridge overnight.
On Monday, I rolled out the dough, cut the cookies, and topped my Christmas trees with green and rainbow-colored sprinkles. Then, I slid several trays of cookies into the oven to bake.
Why this year? I don’t really know, except to say it’s been an awful period in our country even though I’m a survivor and somehow have reached new creative heights in my personal life in 2025: several memoir-writing workshops, two joyful holiday concerts, and another book.
And, of course, I still miss my mother. She’s been gone since January 2013, but the grief reappears with the holidays. I suppose I needed to feel her presence again.
I needed to rescue my past Christmas-cookie-cutting memory with Mom. To keep that sweet, simple goodness alive in the stillness of my kitchen. To shepherd it into my present Arizona life with Tom and breathe new life into that tradition.
This is a momentous day for me. My sixth book just went live on Amazon.
Sixty-Something Days is the story of my post-65 quest to stay relevant creatively. It is a collection of my best essays, poems, and short fiction from 2022 to 2025.
The book is an artistic tapestry of my writing, singing, teaching, learning, growing, and surviving journey … with family and chosen family … connecting one leg of my life (my midwestern past) with another (my western present) during this period of tremendous upheaval in our country.
In my heart, I know this book will resonate with many of you–my loyal followers–who like me continue to strive to nurture and protect the artists, educators, animals and nature, and diverse disenfranchised people in our communities.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to click the link below and be among the first to buy a copy. Thank you for your support of my creative pursuits!
The middle of October is upon us, and I am addicted to the pumpkin spice lattes at Grounds on 2nd, our favorite haunt in Old Town Scottsdale.
More important, I am delighted to report I have completed the manuscript for another book. It’s called Sixty-Something Days.
Book six is a memoir tapestry that first entered my consciousness around my sixty-fifth birthday in July 2022. I began to closely consider what it means to stay creative and relevant in our later years … especially in our divisive culture enamored with youth but often dismissive of wisdom.
This book explores that idea in episodic ways. It features sixty-five essays, poems, and flashes of fiction, which I first published here over the past three years. Now, I am stitching them together.
With time–and the encouragement of friends and readers–I began to see a thread of truth running through them: that as human beings (lovers of music and nature) we must remember the poignant arc-of-life moments (past and present) while striving to stay involved, influence others through our compassion, and share our hard-earned wisdom.
Those themes appear in my other books, but this one feels more urgent. More emphatic. I feel an obligation to share what I have learned, find beauty and hope wherever we can in our lives, and raise a banner that is a call to action to survive this period of tremendous upheaval in our country.
Currently, I am working closely with Sam, graphic designer extraordinaire, to create a cover and develop the interior format. Sam has partnered with me on all of my books.
Yesterday, he sent me the first galleys for review. I can see book six taking shape. I feel my enthusiasm swelling. If all goes well, I will publish Sixty-Something Days sometime in November.
October is bright and beautiful in central Arizona. The intense heat of summer is gone. Mornings and evenings are cooler.
Back in St. Louis, it was fortuitous that Tom and I decided to visit the Gateway Arch on September 22, because–with the U.S. government shutdown–the Arch and other park facilities across the country staffed by the National Park Service closed October 1. Who knows where this latest setback for the American people will lead?
Still, life goes on.
Beginning October 10, I will teach another memoir writing workshop at Mustang Library in Scottsdale. Tom is leading a film series, called Hollywood Laughs, at the same location on Thursday afternoons until mid-November.
Meanwhile, fall chorus rehearsals are underway for our next Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus (PHXGMC) concert, Let Your Spirit Sparkle, in December at the Orpheum Theatre. I will wear my blue sparkly vest on stage again. This 2025/2026 concert season is my sixteenth consecutive year singing with gay choruses in Chicago and Phoenix. It is a vital part of my life.
Under the dynamic leadership of Antonio and Darlene–our artistic director and assistant artistic director respectively–PHXGMC has grown to more than 150 diverse members. Our voices will be strong when we march in the Phoenix Pride Parade on October 19.
Next month, Kirk will visit us in Arizona for a few days. Even as the mayhem in our country spreads, Tom and I look forward to gathering with Nick and him. We will enjoy a few quiet hours with both of my sons in our newly remodeled, freshly painted desert home.
We will give thanks for our fortunate lives, good health, and meaningful artistic opportunities in our sixty-something years, which have enabled us to have a positive impact on the lives of others in our community.
In February 2024, John, Sharon, Tom, and I sat around a half-moon-shaped booth in Phoenix, devouring yummy, syrup-soaked, gluten-free waffles and nursing hot mugs of coffee at Jewel’s Bakery and Cafe.
They had been in town for a church retreat over a three-day weekend and were about to return their rental car to Sky Harbor Airport. Breakfast together was our sendoff before they flew home to St. Louis.
“Oh, did you see Nancy’s post on Facebook? There’s gonna be a Class of ’75, Affton High School, 50th reunion sometime, somewhere next September in St. Louis,” I reported.
“You guys should definitely do it. ” Sharon chimed in. “The four of us should go together! Don’t worry about Tom and me. We’ll keep each other company.”
“Sure. Why not!?” Tom agreed.
“I’m in if you’re in,” John stared directly at me. He and I were close junior and high school pals in Affton, though his family moved north, away to another St. Louis area school district before our senior year.
“Okay,” I concluded. “The journalist inside me is telling me we should go.”
Our scheme–hatched in Phoenix, to be realized more than a year and a half later in St. Louis–was born.
***
The sometime was 5 to 9 p.m. on September 21, 2025. The somewhere? Grant’s Farm, a rambling, forested 281-acre estate in south suburban St. Louis, named for Ulysses S. Grant and owned by the Busch family.
Specifically, our 50th reunion would occur in the Bauernhof Courtyard area there. It’s an old-world community space where–since its opening in 1954–St. Louisans have gathered to sample Anheuser-Busch products, and amble down hallways of vintage horse carriages past Clydesdale stables. It is an iconic St. Louis destination, draped in mid-twentieth-century nostalgia.
With the threat of showers in the air, John, Sharon, Tom and I arrived in the Grant’s Farm parking lot just before 5 p.m. Immediately, I began to spot familiar faces. I hugged Terri and Beth, two classmates I hadn’t seen in decades. We boarded a tram that would transport us through the woods to the Bauernhof. I inhaled the fresh-yet-familiar, dampness of the lush green forest.
The long-awaited immersion into my past Affton High School life–connecting one leg of my past as a seventeen-year-old, long-haired (remember, it was the 1970s), reserved, enterprising, unactualized gay adolescent with the other leg of my present much older, wiser, grayer, gayer, literary self–was about to commence.
When we arrived at the Bauernhof Courtyard entrance, we stepped out of the tram towards an archway. Nancy, our cheerful, detail-minded Class of ’75 organizer, greeted us with hugs.
We formed a line to check in and pick up drink tickets. Affton attendees (in this case, John and me) received name tags bearing our black-and-white high school yearbook photos. Significant others, such as Sharon and Tom, got tags with an image of a cougar beside their names. (The cougar is the Affton High School mascot.)
John and I proceeded through the line with our “cougar spouses” toward the courtyard. A photographer snapped photos as couples and singles entered. In that moment, as I turned to see the line queuing behind me, I spotted someone significant I had hoped to see. Not a fellow student, but a teacher I admired from my high school years. It was Judy Rethwisch, my drama teacher.
The high school version of me would have faded and stepped back, reticent to make a scene or a visible statement. But the confident me–the sixty-eight-year-old gay man with his husband by his side–stepped forward to reconnect with Judy.
“I want you to know what a positive difference you have made in my artistic life,” I smiled and reached forward to hug her. “With you at the helm, I found my peeps in the theatre program at Affton,” I went on. In a flash, I recounted roles I played in productions of Fiddler on the Roof and Gypsy under Judy’s dedication and tutelage.
Judy smiled and listened intently as Tom captured a few photos of us locked in conversation. She told me she is still teaching drama. Sixty-one years as an educator. Still vibrant. Still making a difference in the lives of other aspiring actors, musicians, and artists. She asked for my card and told me she is interested in reading one of my books. That was just the beginning of a stream of seminal reunion moments.
I quickly rediscovered a parade of classmates coming and going all around me. Some were fuzzy in my memory. Others, like Jon, more meaningful. He was a good friend in high school, who traveled to Colorado with John and me after our junior year of high school.
Suddenly, I was transported to August 1974. Somehow, the three of us had convinced our parents, that we–one seventeen-year-old and two sixteen-year-old boys–would be safe driving and camping together across country in John’s AMC Javelin, pulling a small trailer.
Yes, we were underage and found someone to buy us lots of Coors beer, which we swilled by the campfire at night. But we survived intact. I recall vividly shoveling down steak and eggs for breakfast in a bar somewhere in Wyoming, while in the corner of the tavern, Richard Nixon, was announcing his resignation on a beat-up black-and-white TV.
Back at the reunion, other male and female classmates trailed by to greet each under the courtyard tent. It featured a beautiful crystal chandelier that hung in the center of the space.
Soon a line formed at a barbeque buffet. We juggled our drinks and grabbed plates, before landing at one end of a long rectangular table Tom and Sharon had secured.
At one point, I turned, and Jeff appeared. He and I were pals, who shared a few classes. We ate together frequently in our high school cafeteria. Honestly, these memories are vague for me. But I remembered his handsome face. It hadn’t changed much, given the fifty-year gap in our connection.
When Jeff introduced his long-time partner Lee to Tom and me, I felt my past and present lives coalesce. Neither Jeff nor I were aware of the other’s sexual orientation in high school. Sadly, that was the norm for 1975 for unrealized, unfulfilled, budding gay adolescents.
But knowing that against the tide of social norms we had each found happiness with our male partners and had independently decided to return to the reunion was physical proof why I had come to the Class of 1975 reunion. I needed to fully reconcile my past closeted self with the authentic gay man I had become.
A little later in the evening, Tom returned to our table and said emphatically: “I can’t tell you why, but you need to go to the dessert table right now.”
Of course, I listened to my husband and followed suit. When I arrived there, I discovered Nancy and Jim (the reunion organizer and her husband) had brought two of my books–From Fertile Ground and Tales of a Rollercoaster Operator–to display there for all to see.
I don’t know that I gasped, but it felt like I did. To be appreciated for my writing that way, left me speechless in the moment. It was a lovely gesture, authored by Nancy and Jim. Another phenomenal moment, which connected one leg of my life with another.
Before the reunion came to a close and we boarded the tram, all of the Class of 1975 Affton High School classmates–about 120 of us in attendance–stood on a wobbly set of risers for a group picture. (Earlier in the evening, a large poster bearing the names and photos of our forty-nine classmates who have passed graced a corner of the same stage.)
Certainly, the wrinkles and gray hair for those of us who have survived into our late sixties were apparent on the evening of Sunday, September 21, 2025. But the smiles and fun-loving community spirit superseded all of that. Our hearts were full.
***
After treating John and Sharon to breakfast Monday morning, Tom and I had a few hours on our own before we needed to make our way to the St. Louis airport for the trip home to Arizona. There were a few loose ends for us to tie together.
First, we drove to Left Bank Books in the central west end of St. Louis to browse the stacks. It’s a renowned, LGBTQ-friendly, independent bookstore we had planned to visit on the morning of our shared sixtieth birthday. But after I suffered a mild heart attack that day–in the city where I was born–our lives took a vastly different path. Fortunately, we survived that experience together.
Appropriately, our final stop in St. Louis was the Gateway Arch. In the late 1970s, during my collegiate years, I was a National Park Service history interpreter there. Giving tours of the Museum of Westward Expansion, welcoming visitors to the top of the Arch, and–from time to time–introducing a fascinating documentary film about the construction of the Arch, called Monument to the Dream.
The film chronicles the beauty and simplicity of Eero Saarinen’s winning design, but also the herculean effort required for a diligent crew to erect the monument through all sorts of weather conditions.
On a warm autumn day when the Arch was completed–October 28, 1965–the crew sprayed a steady stream of water on the south leg, which was expanding in the heat, to allow the capstone–the final piece at the top between the two legs–to be wedged in and joined permanently.
In a symbolic sense, that is what this later-in-life St. Louis reunion with friends and family means to me.
Call it the arc of life or the Arch of life. Either way these sixty-something years began in Missouri, brought me to Chicago for a long career and life as a single father, and carried me to Arizona with my husband. There we have discovered a rewarding artistic life together among new and old friends–our chosen family–even as our freedoms and institutions in the America we still love are threatened by fascism.
Along the way, the highs and lows have transported me to a profound place of greater gratitude and understanding, which I have earned.
It is a welcome destination that once felt out of reach.
On Monday, September 22, 2025, Tom captured this photo of me leaning against the base of the north leg of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri.
Mark Johnson Stories 