Forty One Years Ago
At approximately 11:20 in the morning of December 21, 1968, Kathryn McDarby and William Edward Corcoran were joined in the Holy Bonds of Matrimony. A reception followed at the Stockport Fire House, catered by Mrs. Harold McDarby and attended by a host of friends and relatives. The couple honeymooned in downtown Sidney, New York.
So history records the event. Here are some of the little known facts (or perhaps all too well known facts).
On September 12, 1967 Phi Delta Rho Fraternity hosted a party with Pi Chi Sorority at the old City Hall in Oneonta. I went, danced with some Phi Chi chicky and graciously waited around for her while she was in the bathroom franticly trying to figure out a way to dump the dork outside the door. But I did have a car, and we were having a date party the following Saturday and that was a hard ticket to score, so all in all she would tolerate me for one date.
One thing led to another and before long we were seeing each other quite a bit -- for exactly 41 days. After that, we never spent more than three days in the same place until we were married. First I went student teaching and was in Oneonta only on the weekends, then she went student teaching and was only in town on the weekends, then summer, then Kay went back to school and I started teaching at JC.
What cemented our relationship was all the time we spent in a car – a moving car. I was her only transportation between student teaching assignments and Oneonta. I had an old green Chevy 2 without a radio. On the long trips from Oneonta to Illion or Balston Spa there was nothing to do but talk. And in the talking was the sharing and in the sharing was the love.
By New Years of 1968 I was sure I wanted to spend a lot of time with someone who I knew would always tell me the truth, no matter what and would still love me no matter what the truth was.
My big plan was to get engaged at our Date weekend in May of 1968. I had it all worked out. While we were horseback riding through the forest, I would give her the ring and make a great speech. What a dumb ass idea!!!. As I turned to propose, her horse decided lunch at the barn was much more important and clearly the person on his back couldn’t do much to stop him. I rounded up the horse and got her back on the trail, but the moment was lost.
We did get engaged, and we built a wonderful plan. I would get a job, she would finish college and the following summer we would get married. I would have saved a good deal of money, she would have a job and we would be on easy street. Only that meant being apart another year. In July, I was at her house in Columbiaville for the weekend. On Sunday I went to Mass and as I was sitting there it just came over me that I didn’t want to wait another year. I went back to the house and we all sat around the kitchen table with most votes being , “ not the most practical idea” but the two that counted being “Yes”
So, we decided to get married over Christmas break of 1968. That meant we had to find a place half way between Oneonta and Johnson City. That should be easy!! Except my take home pay was $362 a month. Telephone, electric and heat would run us $56 a month, gas for the cars cost us about $40 a month, and insurance cost us another $54 a month. College tuition and expenses sucked $30 a month from our budget and paying for living room furniture cost $23 a month. We could eat for $60 a month, but that would leave only $120 for rent and extras. That meant the lovely apartments available were out of our price range and the ones we could afford we couldn’t live in.
We looked at some amazing dumps. Finally, we answered the very last add. It was for a garage apartment on River Street in Sidney. It was an ugly, asbestos shingled building that sat way back on the river. But when we saw the inside, it was gorgeous. The floor was immaculate, the appliances were modern and spotless and it had lots of room. We grabbed it at $100 a month.
Kay’s mother planned the catering, the showers were held and finally it was December. We had a faculty meeting at school Thursday December 19th. They gave me a $50 check as a wedding present. I used it to fill up the car and to buy our first Christmas tree. I got to Sidney, set up the tree, decorated it and drove on to Columbiaville. We spent Friday cleaning the Fire House with help from Kay’s cousins, had a nice party at Kay’s parents house and I spent the night with my brother and parents in a motel outside of Hudson.
The next morning we were married, much to the objection of the Priest who felt marrying someone not of the Catholic faith was not a real wedding anyway. Bob Stark hid my car in a parking lot up the street so it would not be “decorated” I hope he knew how much I appreciated it. I had a great time at the reception; we were nearly the last to leave. We stopped at a hotel on Windham Mountain for the first night. I remember we were the only ones there and all through dinner we were entertained by a black cat that was playing on the stage. ( or hunting dinner which I chose not to think about)
The next morning I woke up with the most romantic thought in the world going through my head, “ What the hell have I done? I’m not ready for any of this.” Ten years later Kay told me she woke up thinking exactly the same thing.
I was excited to get back to Sidney and see the surprised expression on Kay’s face when she saw my Christmas tree. I got the surprised look, but I had one as well. During the three days I had been gone, every single needle on the tree had fallen off, dumping them and the decorations in a big pile under the tree. Never buy your Christmas tree in a gas station.
We unpacked our wedding presents. Bob Stark gave us three stainless steel mixing bowls which we still use nearly every day but most people gave us money. That money saved our lives. We spent most of the honeymoon buying the essentials for starting up a home. I remember how exciting it was to be together and to buy things that would be “ours”. Most of what we bought, we still use or we used it until it just wore out. The one casualty I still feel bad about was a set of salt and peppershakers. The salt was a little girl owl and the pepper was a boy owl. We had them on the counter in the kitchen. One night the cabinet fell off the wall and crushed the pepper shaker beyond repair. We still have the widowed salt shaker, but I miss her buddy to this day. It was one of the first things we bought together.
Time moved and shifted and life forced us to move on to new times. Most have been good, but I think, if heaven allows you to relive parts of your life, the nine months we spent in Sidney would be one part I would visit again and again.

The great crisis of life is not that we are unaware of our faults, but that we are all too aware of them. There came a time when I was so consumed by my failings I sunk into self hatred and self loathing. How could I be responsible for such harm to people I cared about? How could I be the great betrayer, the great enemy? I reached a level of such ebony despair I lost all laughter.
And then, between one step and another, I felt a great cosmic hug. With it came this perfect peace. And I knew things. I knew I would never be judged for what I was not, but cherished for what I was. I knew that “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” meant that we would be forgiven in the exact way, with the exact mercy, compassion and understanding we extended others. I knew that “what you have done for the least of your brothers” did not refer only to the poor or downtrodden, but the people in our lives we are the angriest at. I knew that “you cannot serve two masters” included the choice between hate and love.
I knew that God was not some great scorekeeper sending childhood cancer or car wrecks or floods to teach humanity some lesson, but that God would use those natural tragedies to work great miracles within us ---- if we would only listen. But, God never shouts, he whispers in the gentlest ways, and if you are not attentive, you will miss his words. Fear not, he will try again and again.
I knew that if God could love as disreputable, broken, and sinful a person as me, what arrogance for me to not see every other creature on earth in that light. I knew I would spend the rest of my life whittling down the log in my eye and ignoring the speck in others eyes.