Sole Survivor

by Holly Dunn

  Once I moved home we’d be more than three hours apart. I feared that what we had wouldn’t survive the distance. What would he say when I told him? I imagined this must be the kind of anxiety a guy feels when he’s about to propose to a girl. What would we do, end it? That was the only other option, and I wasn’t sure which way things would go.

  When I told Jacob I had to move back to Evansville, his response shocked me.

  “I’ll move with you.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “Yes. Let’s do this. Let’s try us,” he said.

  I knew what he would be giving up in Lexington to come and be with me in Evansville. I was shocked he would turn down an opportunity to own his own company and to pick up his entire life like that. But he insisted he wanted to spend more time together and to find out if we could finally make our relationship work.

  Once we were back in Evansville, I spent the rest of 2004 working for Dad and partnering with Brian Turpin on Holly’s House, while Jacob went into sales with an underground construction equipment company.

  At the turn of the year, we planned a special trip to New York City to celebrate my twenty-eighth birthday. Nearly every year since we were twenty—save for those two years when we weren’t speaking—Jacob and I had a tradition of spending a weekend in Manhattan for either my birthday or Valentine’s Day to see a musical and eat a good dinner. This year’s show would be The Lion King on Broadway.

  While I had no idea at the time, Jacob was planning on proposing that weekend. He bought an engagement ring from a jeweler in his hometown, Maysville, Kentucky, and left it with the jeweler to be resized. His mom and stepdad came to Evansville the weekend before our trip to bring him the finished ring, but I didn’t realize that’s why they were in town. I simply assumed they wanted to see Jacob. I also never noticed how nervous he was, especially going through airport security. He had safety-pinned the ring to the zipper on his jeans, and he hoped to heaven TSA security guards wouldn’t find it during the metal screening.

  We stayed at the Peninsula, a grand hotel in a turn-of-the-century building on Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, just a five-minute walk up to Central Park. Our flight was delayed, and we got into the city late Thursday evening. We had dinner and drinks on the hotel’s rooftop, and then I was ready to crash.

  “Want to go for a walk in Central Park?” Jacob asked.

  I looked at him like he was crazy. It was dark and cold, and I was exhausted.

  Jacob was now down one day of our weekend in the city and still hadn’t figured out when, where, or how he would propose. My birthday was Sunday, so he didn’t want to wait to do it then. On Friday, he was racking his brain to figure out a romantic gesture. Even though we spent part of the day on the observation deck on top of the Empire State Building, the proper moment just didn’t present itself. On Saturday, we spent most of the day strolling and shopping, and by early afternoon I decided to go back to the hotel and take a nap. While I was resting, Jacob’s plan finally came to fruition.

  Late that afternoon, he went down to the concierge and told them, “I need a dozen red roses by five o’clock.” The concierge couldn’t make any promises given that Jacob’s time frame was so short.

  Meanwhile, I woke up, took a shower, and started getting ready to go to dinner and the show, all the while wondering where Jacob was. I tried to call him, but couldn’t get him on his cellphone. Just as I was almost finished getting ready, I heard the doorbell and looked through the peephole to see who was on the other side.

  There stood Jacob with a dozen red roses in his hands.

  Oh my gosh, what’s happening? I wondered.

  I thought at the time he was just being sweet—not that he was actually about to propose. I checked my face in the mirror before I opened the door.

  He walked into the foyer of this huge hotel room and offered the roses to me.

  “They’re beautiful!” I said.

  I tried to take the bouquet out of his hands but he wouldn’t let go. He pointed part of the bouquet at my face, and I noticed what he wanted me to see.

  The ring was tied to one of the roses.

  I immediately started to sob.

  I had no idea. After all we’d been through—eight years of reconciliation and rebuilding trust—he was finally ready to marry me! Most people looking in from the outside assumed we were a full-fledged couple all those years of dating after college. But from my perspective, it felt more like five years of practically begging him to hang out to his proposing marriage. I loved this man with all my heart, and arriving at this point was the sweetest relief I’d ever experienced.

  Through my tears I watched him get down on one knee. He was visibly shaking and nervous and didn’t say much at first.

  “Will you please do me the honor of being my wife?”

  “Of course I will!”

  His sweet, loving proposal left me on cloud nine—no, more like cloud fifty thousand million.

  On our way to dinner, we asked the hotel staff to take pictures of us in the Peninsula’s stately, elegant lobby, and we asked tourists at the Rockefeller Center to take photos of us at the base of the building. I was beaming in pictures we took all over the city and inside the restaurant and even at the show.

  We went to dinner at Smith & Wollensky steakhouse, where we hoped to find a 1977 vintage wine to commemorate the year I was born. A 1979 Robert Mondavi cabernet sauvignon was the closest thing the sommelier had on hand. Restaurant staff came to watch the sommelier decant the classic bottle and to congratulate us on our engagement. After dinner, we were late getting to the New Amsterdam Theatre for The Lion King and by the time we made our way to our seats, there were performers decked out as animals running through the aisles. I didn’t know where in the story we were, and I was too excited to pay much attention to the performance.

  The rest of the weekend was a blur. My cousin Sarah and her then-boyfriend (now husband) Joe came over from Connecticut to celebrate with us over brunch on Sunday morning, and we flew back to Evansville later that night.

  Six weeks after our engagement in Manhattan, Holly’s House was a full-fledged nonprofit organization. While I was balancing the hotel project for Dunn Hospitality Group and giving presentations to potential donors for Holly’s House, I now also had a wedding to plan—and it was only nine months away. I longed for a destination wedding to somewhere tropical like Hawaii, but I knew that the distance and expense would be difficult for our guests. The beach was what mattered most, so I settled on Sarasota, Florida, where my family had been vacationing since I was a little girl. I took a trip down to Florida to scout venues and fell in love with the Ritz Carlton Beach Club, whose hotel wedding coordinator helped me put it all together from afar.

  Our wedding day was Saturday, October 22, 2005. My parents’ anniversary was October 21, and the weekend of the wedding they celebrated thirty-three years together.

  After waiting eight years for my future husband and me to finally come together, several other calamities threatened the wedding day itself. The first stressful moment happened after I ordered a beautiful dress by designer Alvina Valenta from an online store that sold it for almost half the price of the bridal boutique where I’d tried it on. The dress was creamy white satin with a V-neck neckline and a chapel train. Its defining feature was the long row of buttons all the way down the back.

  Six months before my wedding, I received a disturbing email.

  “We regret to inform you that the company from whom you purchased your apparel is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. We cannot guarantee that your order will be fulfilled.”

  In other words, I might not get my wedding dress. What was I supposed to do? Most custom dresses take four to five months to order, and that doesn’t count the rounds of fittings and alterations once it’s in hand. I decided to take my chances and just buy the dress from the boutique and hope it would arrive in time.

  Three months before my wedding, I ended up getting both dresses—but better t
wo than none. There was no way the boutique would issue a refund, and I couldn’t return anything to a bankrupt company, so I simply sold the extra one on eBay.

  The worst part, however, was yet to come. The year 2005 was a record-breaking hurricane season for the area, and just two months earlier, Hurricane Katrina had devastated New Orleans and the surrounding region. As our wedding day drew nearer, so did Hurricane Wilma, a storm that went down in history as the most intense tropical cyclone on record until 2015. We had a short guest list, and Wilma was definitely not on it.

  Wilma wasn’t just the name of a hurricane; Wilma was also the name of Jacob’s late grandmother, a headstrong woman who had raised five children. Jacob tried to make light of the situation.

  “She would be beside herself,” he said, “if a hurricane with her name on it ruined this wedding.”

  Our wedding ceremony was scheduled for four thirty Saturday afternoon. Hurricane Wilma’s reign began around October 16, and just a few days before the wedding, she had intensified into a category five storm capable of catastrophic damage.

  Several of our guests cancelled because of the threat of an impending hurricane, fearing they might not get out of the area in time. I don’t remember how many people backed out, but I do remember feeling annoyed. I was determined to have my wedding no matter what. The idea that I might have to get married in a meeting room was most upsetting—I could have had that kind of ceremony back in Evansville. I didn’t care if I got blown away by Wilma’s winds—I wanted to be married on the beach.

  The staff at the Ritz Carlton were tracking the storm and keeping me posted on its potential arrival. Just before Hurricane Wilma closed in on us, she stalled out for about a day just off the coast. It rained Saturday morning, but by the afternoon the skies were overcast and breezy, and the sun broke through in just the nick of time.

  “Holly, we have a clearing. The wedding’s a go,” said the coordinator. “We can’t put up the pergola for all the wind, but we can set up chairs.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  A beach ceremony is not a typical approach to a wedding. A beach ceremony under threat of a catastrophic hurricane is even more untraditional. But I had little interest in a traditional wedding anyway. I would have even gone without a veil if my sister Heather hadn’t insisted on it.

  That said, I did adhere to a few other traditions, but in my own way. Take, for example, my “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” My garter belt was blue, and I borrowed a set of earrings and a necklace. My designer dress and flip-flops with their sparkly straps were new. What was old was exceptionally special to me: a Kappa key badge from 1918, the year my maternal grandmother, Meme, as I called her, was born. I’m a member of the Golden Key Alumnae Association, in particular, a group called Keepers of the Key, an online affiliation of dedicated Kappa sisters young and old who buy up stolen memorabilia and other collectibles being sold on eBay and other online marketplaces. I wore this special vintage Kappa key close to my heart (quite literally, inside my dress).

  Despite the few who defected in the face of the storm, our wedding was perfect—small and intimate. Our beloved guests braved the breezes on the Lido Key beach while Dad walked me down the pier, through the sand, to where Jacob waited.

  Jacob stepped forward to shake Dad’s hand, and when I turned to look at Dad, he and I were both crying. There haven’t been many times in my life I’ve seen my dad get choked up like that, and it moved me. I kissed him and said, “I love you,” and he stepped back to join Mom and the guests still standing in front of their chairs.

  Heather stood next to me as my matron of honor, and Jacob’s best man was his childhood friend, Ben. Heather’s daughter, my niece Madison, was our flower girl, and Madison’s younger brother, Michael, was our ring bearer. We were married by a close friend of our family, the Rev. Dr. James Murray, who was president of Oakland City University, where my dad went to school. My sorority sister Annie, who was my rock in the ER the morning after the attack, and Chris’s fraternity brother Brian read Scriptures from 1 Corinthians 13 and 1 John 4.

  Jacob and I pledged our love and commitment to each other in good times and in bad, for better or worse, until death should part us in the end.

  At the close of the ceremony, we turned to face our guests.

  “It is my honor and distinct pleasure,” said Dr. Murray, “to present to you Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Pendleton.”

  And then, as our friends and family cheered and clapped, I did a little happy dance. I’d been waiting eight years for this moment, and I couldn’t contain myself!

  Several of our braver guests who came despite the storm nonetheless took off right after the ceremony for fear their flights would be cancelled if they waited much longer. The rest of us went inside to a ballroom for the reception and seated dinner.

  Dad gave a toast and thanked the guests for their bravery in the face of Wilma, and then our small wedding party was introduced. Jacob and I walked through the ballroom doors and made our way to the floor where we enjoyed our first dance to the string quartet’s rendition of “The Way You Look Tonight.” Afterward, Dad and I danced the father-daughter dance to an instrumental “My Way.” Jacob and I picked those songs because we are both huge fans of Frank Sinatra. Dancing with my new husband, and then my beloved father, were some of the happiest moments of my life. But as Ol’ Blue Eyes himself would say, the best was yet to come.

  During dinner, Jacob and I made the rounds to greet each of our family and friends. Most of my friends from the “Life Is Good” gang were present at the wedding, including Tom and Ann Maier, Adrienne, Andy, and Brian, but with a notable exception.

  Five years earlier, on the very date of our wedding, our “Life Is Good” friend Donovan was killed in a car wreck. I wanted to pay tribute to him and his permanent place in our hearts. Donovan loved drinking Jones Soda, an indie brand from Seattle whose bottle labels featured eccentric photos. I can’t say I loved the soda quite as much as Donovan did, but after he died, I drank it at least once a month to honor his memory. One of those times, I noticed that the company invited consumers to customize their own Jones Soda bottle labels, which gave me an idea for a wedding favor. I ordered several cases of the cream soda and berry lemonade flavors with labels that featured a photo of Jacob and me on the beach. The bottles were displayed on a table alongside a framed note that explained the sodas’ significance, signing off with, “Drink, and remember, Life Is Good!”

  Jacob and I had pledged our devotion to each other in good times and bad in front of friends like these, whose relationships had been forged in the very worst of times. Though our group’s nascence was marked by grief, our friendships have been nothing less than joy, and their presence in Florida made my wedding even more special.

  Hurricane Wilma finally landed the day after the wedding, but not before all of us caught the last flights out of Sarasota to drier, calmer lands. Jacob and I went on a honeymoon to the Caribbean for ten days, where we stayed at an all-inclusive island resort on St. Lucia. Back home, we started our new life together in Henderson, Kentucky, just across the river from Evansville.

  Eight years earlier, when I felt hopelessly broken, my dad had assured me that someone would love me just the way I was. And as he likes to say, he was right after all.

  CHAPTER 20.

  Just Deserts

  For all the long, eventful years marked by the attack and my recovery, one single week in June of 2006 turned out to be especially pivotal. On one day, I received national recognition for the public service to my community for the work on Holly’s House. Exactly a week later, Angel Maturino Resendiz, having exhausted his last appeal, was finally put to death.

  Holly’s House didn’t even have a building yet, but Brian Turpin and I were already being recognized for our efforts. Brian was named the 2006 Police Officer of the Year for going above and beyond his duties as an officer. The year before, I was given the US Department of Justice Award for Public Service. I was
honored, but I also thought the recognition was crazy. Despite how supportive the Evansville community was, I was having a hard time getting Holly’s House open. I was winning awards and thinking all the while, This might not even work.

  The most significant recognition, however, came from the Jefferson Awards for Public Service. The Jefferson Awards emerged from the American Institute for Public Service, founded in 1972 by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, former US Senator Robert Taft Jr., and longtime public servant Sam Beard, as a way to honor individual citizens for their contributions and accomplishments in community service. The Jefferson Awards were envisioned as a sort of Nobel Prize on the local and national levels for people making the biggest difference in their communities.

  Leadership Evansville, a nonprofit that trains and develops leadership skills and encourages a passion for the community, hosts an annual award ceremony called a Celebration of Leadership. At its event on Thursday, April 6, 2006, the agency gave out numerous awards to recognize contributions in the arts, education, government, health care, and social services. Out of eighty-four nominees, three of us were awarded local Jefferson Awards at that event, and the Jefferson Award Foundation committee ended up choosing me to represent Evansville and Vanderburgh County at the national ceremony in Washington, DC.

  The awards ceremony was scheduled for Tuesday, June 20, 2006. Dad flew our family to DC the weekend prior so we could enjoy the sights of the city. The Jefferson Award Foundation had also arranged meetings and breakout sessions the day before the ceremony, divided up by states or regions so we could get to know other award winners. I was excited to meet so many amazing people whose stories of ingenuity, creativity, and selflessness would rejuvenate me and inspire me to do even more. Ahead of the dinner and ceremony, we also met with our state representatives, and I posed with my local award with Indiana senator Richard Lugar.