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Walkers of Birmingham / 39 When Susan told her mother she didn’t have the address of that nice fellow from Notre Dame, the situation was quickly resolved. Estelle went to her dresser and pulled out the letter Ed had originally sent to Susan. “I never knew why she saved it, but she did,” says Susan. Susan wrote Ed that she was matriculating at St. Mary’s of the Woods in Terre Haute, not to be confused with St. Mary’s of the Lake in nearby South Bend, and would be glad to see him again. “I got off the train from Birmingham and he met me at the station with his friend, Joe Miller [who would later be Ed’s best man] in Joe’s black convertible Ford. That was fun. They drove me out to school with my steamer trunk hanging over the rear of the car.” Susan was seventeen years old when they met and Ed was twenty-two. “I was five years and five days older than she was and five years later we were married,” Ed recalls. “It was on June 12, 1965.” Dixie Walker was coaching in Milwaukee for an old Brooklyn Dodgers teammate, Bobby Bragan, that summer of 1965. Bragan said Walker could take off with his blessing and attend his daughter’s wedding. “I bought a ring for Susan,” recalls Ed, “and somehow it got lost in the mail when I shipped it to Birmingham for Susan to try on. The day before the ceremony I arrived in Milwaukee to drive with Dixie to Alabama . I told him what happened to the ring. I was very upset. He picked up the phone, dialed the postmaster at Birmingham and had him search for the ring. In a little while the package was discovered. The post­ master said it would be delivered immediately to the Walker home at 3415 Montevallo Road in Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham. “That made me breathe easier,” says Ed. “Then we got in the car together and started driving south.” They spent about a dozen hours together in the new car, a Chevy Nova convertible similar to Joe Miller’s Ford, as they journeyed south. Ed did all the driving. Dixie maintained control of the map. They talked a little bit about Dixie’s baseball career; they talked some about hunting and fishing, Dixie’s passions; mostly they talked about Susan. There was one conversation with Dixie that day that Ed remembered 40 / Chapter 3 many years later. “As we got into Indiana I noticed the route passed very close to the house I had rented for Sue and me for after we were married ,” Ed says. “It was in Munster, Indiana, about a mile from the toll road we were taking. I asked Dixie as we neared Munster if he would like to take a short detour to see where his daughter would be living. I mentioned that I had picked it out myself and Susan hadn’t seen it yet. I clearly recall his response. ‘Thanks,’ Dixie said, ‘but I don’t think it would be right for me to see the house before Susan did.’ I was a bit embarrassed for suggesting something which he saw as not quite proper. I think he visited us some six months later and seemed very pleased that his daughter lived in such a nice place.” The other memorable conversation of more than forty years ago­ pertained to the car. “I kept pumping the brakes a lot while we were driving, especially down hills. I was an engineer and knew how cars worked. I knew a new car with new brakes needs to be broken in without overheating. Dixie hadn’t said much as we neared the Walker home, except for giving directions. Then we arrived after that long trip. When we finally got inside the house he took me aside and said, ‘Ed, you better get those brakes fixed.’ I just smiled,” he says. The preparations for the large wedding were moving forward under Estelle’s direction. The location at “The Club” in Birmingham had been arranged; the guest list of friends and family had been confirmed; and Susan’s dress, a sparkling, gorgeous white gown, had been purchased. “My mother and father had been married before a justice of the peace in Westchester, New York, while my dad was playing with the Yankees,” Susan recalls. “My mother never really had a wedding. I think she really looked at...

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