As Told to Lou Larkin This is the first time I’ve been able to look back and really understand what happened to me during the divorce. Now I can talk about it and tell you how I felt and why I felt that way. At the time I could not, because what I did was not a conscious, carefully planned effort on my part. I suppose, if you want to look at the cold result of my attempt to keep my parents together, it must be listed as a failure. My parents did divorce. So, statistically, I lost. Yet, I think that from a divorce that almost ruined my life I learned things about myself I’d never have known if I hadn’t become involved. When my parents told me they were going to divorce I wanted to run—the other way. I hate problems. I still do. And the loss of love between my parents became that—exactly. A problem. At first I dragged every conceivable excuse through my mind for ignoring a situation which I wanted to believe was a private and personal difference between two other people. Yet in the sensible moments that finally arrived I knew that these two people were the most important in my world. I loved them, and for me not to become involved was a kind of cowardice, a fear of facing a glaring responsibility. I also felt if I didn’t have the guts to face an obligation that was gnawing at my conscience, I’d be lacking in simple courage. Even worse, what kind of a son would I be? The answer to that question told me I had to do something. Just what, I didn’t know. Now it has to happen to you before you can fully understand the heart-breaking shock that hits you when you see, in print, the fact that your mother and father are going to divorce, as I did in the newspapers. Unfortunately, because I was playing the happy son of happily-married parents on “The Donna Reed Show,” it became a news item that my own parents were breaking up. To me it was like reading that someone I loved had died. I confess that my next reaction, was, “How can they do that to me?” I brooded over that for a while. Then I realized in a cold sweat that I was thinking only of myself and not at all of the heartache my parents were surely suffering. Then I asked myself—and this was the possibility that really floored me—had I been the cause, in whole or in part, for the loss of love between them. I know now that I wasn’t—but it took a long time for me to be sure. I was faced with a big decision—with which parent would I live? How great was my responsibility to each parent, to my older sister Pam and younger one Patty? I decided to live with my mother. Patty would be with her and I saw it was going to be necessary to help Patty as much as possible—and my mother. At the same time I had to avoid giving my father the impression that I was siding with my mother or that from now on he was to be left out. My concern for Patty was particularly sensitive and I’ll tell you why. It was the result of a bitter lesson I learned on December 14, 1959, and it involved Pamela. She was sixteen then and I was fourteen. At that time we were typical brother and sister. Pam and I would quarrel at the drop of an eyelid. We indulged in what psychiatrists call the sibling rivalry. And rivals we were. Then on that day in December we were in an auto accident. Pam was very seriously injured and I have scars on my face and hands. But in the hospital the crisis jammed one thing right up into the front of my mind—I had to be with Pam, not just close by her, but in the same room with her. (Editor’s Note: Paul’s injuries, incidentally, the result of his head smashing through the windshield, involved the restoration of his right ear—it hung by only a small piece of tissue—and one hundred eight six stitches along his right cheek and temple. Only his youth saved him from an excruciating six months’ series of skin and cartilage grafts. Today, unless Paul points them out, the scars of that near-tragedy are almost, fortunately, invisible.) Anyhow, I told the hospital people I wanted Pam in the same room with me. They refused, advising me that all hospitals had a rule which forbid teenage boy and girl from being in the same room. I told them that was ridiculous since we were brother and sister. My father battled the hospital’s front office for more than hour until it relented and allowed Pam to be with me. When I returned from surgery Pam was in my room—in a wheel chair. That was about four in the morning. I was hurting, I was scared and I was groggy. But when I saw Pam in that wheel chair, I cried. I ran to her side, put my arms around her and kissed her, thinking only of what it had taken to make me realize how much I loved her and how absolutely stupid it had been for us to waste our time fighting with each other when the only thing that really mattered was that she was my sister. If you are to love anyone at all in this world, I would advise you to begin with the members of your own family. From that moment on Pam and I have never quarreled. I mean it. Not once. This experience with Pam became my guide line with Patty. It taught me that the most trivial of incidents of unpleasantness in a house can be avoided easily and that to lose even one moment of happiness with my family would be a tragedy. With Pam I’ve never again missed a chance to tell her I loved her and that she was the greatest sister a guy could have. And that’s how it had to be with Patty. It became a part of me, almost obsessive, to love my family. That’s why my parents’ divorce almost killed me. I know it sounds corny and unsophisticated to talk like this, but I am no longer the least bit embarrassed to speak of my affection for them. I am convinced that too many of us think that honest sentiment is an emotion to be smothered. I see lots of marriages in this town, for example, where the husband and wife have all the time in the world for arguments, but how often will one of them stop for a moment and say, “I love you.” The most rewarding part of my special attention to Patty, however, was that by trying to keep things clear for her, I straightened out myself. Little by little I began to reject the ridiculous moods the divorce had brought on, moods that came close to destroying my whole outlook on life. Because in the beginning I was hit by depression. The questions gnawed at me. What chance of happiness, what promise of love was there for me? For Pam? For Patty? What chance was there for anyone, if my parents, who really loved each other, could not make a go of their marriage? When I was with Mom, for example, she would weaken and become aggravated with Dad. Then because it was something I had to do, I defended my father. A few days later, with Dad, he would despair and criticize Mom. Just as suddenly I’d find myself defending my mother. I hated the situation because there was nothing I could do about it. I wanted my parents back together. Yet in my heart I knew it just wasn’t going to happen, no matter how much I wanted it. It took months, but I finally accepted this fact. Then it was easier. And by teaching Patty to understand, I taught myself that in life you can never ignore the other person’s point of view and his right to it. Later in the separation my efforts had one happy effect. Mom and Dad stopped competing for our affections. And realizing the problem their disagreements had caused their children, they now took great pains not to be with us at the same time so that we would not be faced with the necessity of making a “choice.” Patty’s welfare, though, was not only a choice but an obligation. She was seven at the time of the divorce. At that age you wake up in the morning with only the day ahead. You have no great plans, no great problems. It’s fun. Your mind is uncluttered. Life is wide open, bright and filled with exciting promises. At that age you don’t want problems. You swing the way things are going. And that’s the way it was with Patty. She’d swing with the pendulum, never against it. That was fine was long as we had a father and mother with us. But with the separation of my parents came a problem with Patty. With my mother—Patty was on her side. With my father she was on his. A game with love It was, “Daddy, if you don’t let me do this, I’ll tell Mommy.” And with Mom it was the other way around. In truth, I plead guilty to this game myself. I used to work it when my parents were together, But as I grew older I saw I was only causing trouble between people I loved. So, knowing this, I made the decisions that had to be made for Patty. I some instances I had to argue with my parents. I didn’t always make the right decision, but I stood by it, and Patty soon learned that it was useless to pit father against mother, because it was my ruling that counted in the end. There was another problem growing which was not Patty’s fault. Each of my parents loved us. That didn’t change when they separated. What did change was the fervor with which each began to seek the return of our love—separately. Mom would make special concessions to us in return for the open display of our affection for her. Dad would sense that had happened when he visited with us and he’d go one step further hoping to draw more love from us than Mother had. Then Mom would try harder than he. Pretty soon the whole thing was crazy. It was difficult from my side, too. I loved my mother. I loved my father. They had decided they didn’t love each other. The first thing I did, to avoid showing favoritism for either parent, was to show no affection at all. I soon saw this was ridiculous. So I did what I had to do. I loved each of my parents honestly, openly and without reserve. And I wept for them, too. And because they lost love, I almost lost it as a promise in my own life. I wanted, more than anything in the world, to keep them together. I would have gone to any lengths, committed almost any act, to prevent their parting. I might well have done something I really regretted if I hadn’t relieved the bitterness by thinking more of Patty. Because in devoting my time to her and because of having to explain the divorce to my kid sister, I explained it to myself. Two adults I loved had grown apart and would never again be together as my mother and father. The pain of that thought is easier now, but it still saddens me. I can’t help it. But I learned one thing from my parents’ divorce that I might never have learned. When love is gone it is gone. All the tears and tempers and resentments are self-torment. Nothing will bring that love back. But there are other loves ahead for us if we’ll just have faith. And that, too, has come to pass. My mother has since remarried and her husband is everything fine and good. My dad has met a woman whose company he enjoys and we both agree she is a marvelous person. And neither parent has a personal animosity toward the other. I’m lucky.