JULIE ANDERSON CHILDERS

Thank you, Nile.  Like you, I was trained to pay close attention to the facts.  And to make sure they were correct by double-checking. 

Jon Coffey sent me a 1960's era postcard of the "Tree House Lounge" in Coralville, not the "Tree Top" as I called it.  Thank you, Jon!  That's the place where Julie ( Anderson) Childers used to work, according to my sometimes flawed memory.

RIP, Julie.

In the weeks before Jon Coffey forwarded to me Julie (Anderson) Childers' obituary, I was mulling the prospect of reaching out to her to come join us this year in September.  I've thought about doing that dozens of times in the past.  My chief regret now is that I'm forced to write what I should have told her while she was alive.    

The obituary author wrote, "She was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside."    During my Senior year at City High I came to know that stunning girl.   I think her boyfriend Dan Brender and she had broken up or something like that.  I had a huge crush on her, like so many boys at City High, starting with Senior Jack Jeffries when she was a Sophomore.  Julie was mature beyond her years, emotionally at least ten, maybe twenty years older than all of us young guys who adored her. And she passed for that older woman!   I heard, although she was under age, she got a job as a cocktail waitress at the Tree Top Lounge in Coralville.  

I started hanging out with Julie.  Like others before and after me, I basked in the sunshine of her warmth and affection.  She adored her younger brother whom I believe is Carl?  She hugged him and made him feel, I'm sure, so secure, like a mother would do. It's not surprising she went on to become a marvelous mother to seven children and a grand grandmother to five more. 

Julie was a toucher.  She'd touch my shoulder and hug easily without nervousness, unlike any member of my family.  Her smile was a warm opening to a special soul.  She was fearless in conversations.  I remember her once in a car with three of us driving around Iowa City talking openly about sexual intercourse, in a way that was not clinical nor lewd.  It was an artist's portrait of the joy of engaging in it, rendered first person. Julie was looking forward to that amazing experience someday.

I was so crazy about her I once rode my bicycle from Kirkwood Avenue in Iowa City at night to Julie's house to see her, and back in the dark, without lights.  Alas, after a time she got back together with Dan Brender, and it looks like they went on to have three children.  And she embraced the concept for the rest of her days, "love each other as I have loved you."

                                                                           ***

Julie, you were a brief but unforgettable comet who tore across my young sky.  I'm sorry I never told you that.

Love, Will