Diplomacy and Diamonds

by Joanne King Herring

  Bob liked high living and enjoyed his well-earned money. He told everyone who would listen that he was in love with me. “I am the man who is in love with Joanne Johnson,” he once introduced himself to a large group, “and my objective in life is to marry her.”

  Bob knew about Pete, so he decided to court my parents and grandparents. He sent them flowers, did errands, and drove them places. They adored him. They thought it was wonderful for me to have someone who loved me and would take care of me forever. “Marry me,” Bob said. “I will build you the house of your dreams.”

  I liked a twelve-acre piece of land in Houston’s Rivercrest neighborhood. Bob bought it in anticipation of our inevitable (in his mind) nuptials.

  I was still dating Pete and other boys, so Bob asked my mother if he could move in with us. To my horror, my mother said yes. He was told he could never come upstairs where I stayed, though. “That would not be proper,” my mother said primly.

  So he moved into the family room, and for six months he watched as I came and went with other boys!

  Every weekend I flew to Dallas to see Pete and his family. “Why go on the plane?” Bob asked. “I will drive you up and bring you back. It takes the same amount of time.” I accepted. Pete said nothing, but his father teased his son mercilessly about the “King fish.”

  My family was devoted to Bob. He was movie-star handsome, he was rich, and he was always promising me the world. I began to fall in love, so soon it was good-bye, Pete.

  The wedding invitations were in the mail. The day my wedding pictures were made, MGM called about the Clark Gable movie for which I had auditioned. My father, who answered the phone, was told, “We want to give Joanne a chance because she has something very rare… star quality. She glows.”

  “We are not interested,” he tersely replied. He did not tell me about the offer until after I was married. The part went to María Elena Marqués, a beautiful Mexican actress.

  Now I had a new dream. My marriage would be a fairy tale. I would work to make it as “happily ever after” as possible.

  I was so inexperienced, I thought life was like the movies or a novel and I could play the roles I fancied. I was tired of Scarlett O’Hara. I had played her for years and would be haunted by her for the rest of my life. Daphne du Maurier had written a best-selling book called Rebecca. I now wanted to be Rebecca. This mythical creation with a stately and regal home called Manderley was beautiful, witty, and charming. She was also dead! In the movie, Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier played the characters.

  In my immature imagination, I resurrected Rebecca as me. It may be difficult for young women today to relate to that notion because so much has changed. But in the 1950s, the emphasis for women was strictly on home and family. That was our lives!

  I read books and magazines on how to be a good wife. Like Rebecca, I even kept my stationery in an embroidered box. Everything had to match. When I had a tea for fifty ladies, all fifty of the china, silver, and lace-trimmed napkins were matched. Now no one does that! It was ridiculous.

  With my father’s help, I had designed the house Bob and I built for our home. Our Xanadu was built on the land that Bob had purchased. Bob was amazed at the results. “Design the houses I’m building,” he requested. My life of luxurious indulgence was about to end.

  I began handling the design and decoration of Bob’s houses. This was hard work. I had to use the same sofas, drapes, and bedspreads over and over yet make each house look different. I also did the landscaping with laborers who had never worked with plants.

  I started designing the floor plans for Bob’s small houses, carefully drawing the plans to scale. Every inch costs money, thus these plans had to be properly done and fit the lots, which were smallish too. I had had no training for this other than what my father had taught me, but I became good enough so that the draftsmen we hired eventually began to respect me. It was tough for the boss’s wife to tell guys with degrees in architecture how to draw floor plans, though.

  Also, I’d drive up to the construction sites in my convertible wearing my frilly dresses. The workmen were offended at taking orders from the boss’s wife. They did not like it when I asked them to correct mistakes or to be careful with the equipment. Gradually I learned to work with tough guys who had no respect for a woman “out of her place,” that is, the home.

  I had to check on the work done by the plumbers, painters, air-conditioning subcontractors, and so on. They were all men. There were no women contractors and few, if any, women architects. So I, in my frilly dress, had to tell the men when things were done wrong, a difficult and awkward task. The subcontractors never liked me, but because I learned their trade and knew what I was doing, they accepted me. And, of course, my husband paid them.

  This was my first battle in a man’s world. Now I use humor, and tough guys do not always like me, but they do not faze me. Then, I just did the best I could and hated every moment. The glass ceiling may not be as thick today as it was in the 1950s, but it’s still there. Every woman will tell you that, and back then I was always bumping my head against it, as so many women have. Now, instead of making demands, I make suggestions. When you don’t push, men will ultimately give you what you want. In my case it seemed they always gave me more.

  I worked side by side with Bob King. He covered the financial side, buying the land and calculating and watching costs to keep the company functioning. I got the houses built, decorated, and landscaped, and that helped to sell them. In all we built five thousand houses, and our houses always won in the home shows.

  I was running our big house in Rivercrest, being the social butterfly I thought I was supposed to be, and trying to run half of Bob’s business, all at the same time. I trained my mind to anesthetize myself so that I wouldn’t feel pain from being so tired, a tool I have used often to get me through tough times. In 1952, though, I felt twinges after straightening up. I thought it was from lifting too many heavy objects. I should have noted that the ten-year mark was approaching. This time, the joy of my teenage years and my fairy-tale marriage was leading up to a death… mine.

  CHAPTER 6

  A Brush with Death and New Life

  I was only twenty-one years old and the mayor had named me Houston’s official hostess. I had it all, but it meant nothing, because I wanted to die.

  A steadily increasing pain in my back had me considering death as a blessed deliverance. I had seen many doctors, yet the pain only grew worse until nothing in my body functioned. I could not walk. Dr. George Ehni admitted he did not know what was wrong. “You must have a myelogram to find out,” he said. I was put facedown on a gurney, increasing the already unbearable pain, then fluid was injected into my spine for X-rays. At the time, the brutal process was in its infancy. The attending nurse fainted.

  After almost unendurable pain, they found the problem: a thick, dark, ominous blockage in the spine. Dr. Ehni surmised it was a tumor growing within my spinal column. It had to be removed. One night before the surgery the nuns who worked at St. Joseph Hospital came to me and prayed. “You should know how serious this really is,” they told me. “We think you should be prepared. No one has ever walked away from this surgery. You will either die on the operating table or be in a wheelchair for life.”

  I was stunned. Nothing in my gilded life had prepared me for this, and the doctor had failed to mention it. I had never felt so alone in my life. In the wee hours of the morning, I learned to walk with God.

  I did not tell my husband or my parents what the nuns had told me. It was just me and God. It finally comes to that in all of our lives. We are completely alone unless we have Jesus, who will never leave us, no matter how often we leave Him. I talked to Him about many things during this ghastly time, and I stopped asking, “Why me?” Other people had plenty of their own problems too. As I was to see so often, I would not want to trade mine for theirs.

  I made my peace with God. “Lord, I have led a charmed life,” I said. “You have given me everything. I am
not afraid to die.” I really did not fear death. I accepted it.

  But I could not accept living the rest of my life in a wheelchair. Yet the morning they rolled me into the operating room, I said, “Okay, Lord. If You want me to live in a wheelchair, I accept it. Your will, not my will, be done.” I gave God my life at the entrance to the operating room—to die, which I was not afraid to do, or to live in a wheelchair if He chose. The choice I made that day changed my life. I understood faith at that moment as I never had before.

  I came out of the operating room a medical miracle. The tumor had been wound around the fragile nerves inside my spinal column. Dr. Ehni untwisted the nerves, removed the tumor, and put the nerves back in their proper place without lasting damage. Until that time, no one had ever done that. At thirty-four, Dr. Ehni would became world famous, while color photos of my back went into medical books.

  I never had another moment of pain. The tumor was gone. I could ride horseback, ski, climb, dance, and do everything I had feared losing. I felt unbound gratitude toward Dr. Ehni and to God.

  Little did I know that disasters come in threes. At twenty-four, I encountered my second.

  I began to ache when I saw other friends’ children. That was all they talked about. They were completely occupied with these enchanting new lives. I had nothing to add. I felt lost in that world. It hurt. I could not understand why I was not getting pregnant. “What is wrong with me? Why no baby?” I asked my doctor.

  The doctor couldn’t understand either. “I don’t know,” he said. “Wait and see.” Then, after months of tests, the doctor said, “I occasionally have an unmarried girl from a good family who gives up a child for adoption. They would be comforted for their child to go to someone like you who could care for it well.”

  I raced home and said, “Bob, the doctor will find us a baby from a nice family that we can adopt!”

  “Never,” he refused. “I will never accept anyone else’s baby… forget that.”

  I burst into tears, which I rarely did. Tears had no effect. My life seemed meaningless. I ran to my car to get away from the hurt. As I drove toward the sunset, great swatches of color—magenta, pink, blue, purple, orange—spread across the evening sky, all mingled by the Master’s hand. No artist has ever matched His work. Was God speaking to me, as He often does, through His beautiful world? I felt His power and mastery over all things—nature, illness, and even the pain of being childless.

  “All right, Lord. You say that if we have faith the size of a tiny, almost impossible-to-see mustard seed, you will move mountains. I shall take that mustard seed and believe against all unbelief that you will give me a child,” I promised.

  Weeks, months, a year went by… nothing. God does not keep a schedule. It was tough to understand for a woman wanting a child.

  One afternoon I was filled with misery and wanted to dissolve into tears. “No,” I said to myself. “If I give in to this sadness, I do not have the mustard seed. I believe staunchly. I will not fail in my faith. I will go forward smiling.”

  Please understand: God did not help me through this moment of doubt. I had to make that decision myself. He gives us free choice to take the path to happiness or the path to fear and destruction. He does not lead us there. That’s what makes having and keeping faith so difficult. Faith is a choice we make, with no promises ahead that we can see. Faith is the things hoped for, the things not seen. There are no guarantees. We must accept what comes, no matter what dangers we see in the darkness around us—which can seem black indeed. It is hard to keep believing.

  But I left the quiet womb of the car, comforted and assured. I felt flooded with peace.

  Several months later, my surprised doctor said, “I would never have believed it possible. It is a miracle… you are pregnant.”

  Sometimes dreams really do come true—the right dreams. The Lord never fails. He keeps His promises. Though it is sometimes difficult to keep going on against all odds, if it is His will, our faith will be rewarded. Beau King was born—a special gift from God, the most wonderful gift of my life. A baby, a new life! He was perfect.

  It was not easy, though. We both almost died in the birth process. My cervix would not dilate, and the anesthetic stopped dilation, so the doctors were unable to give me anything to stop the pain. I didn’t scream or moan, though. In my family, tears and signs of pain, fear, or sadness were considered signs of weakness. We endure and do not inflict our struggles upon others. When Beau was finally born, his head was pointed from the forceps that finally released him. He was huge. The nurses called him “the cowboy” because he was the tallest baby in the nursery. His difficult birth never slowed him one moment of his life, though. He was a cowboy then and, at six foot three, is a movie-star-handsome cowboy now.

  The family rejoiced and the whole of Memorial Hermann Hospital rejoiced with us. My room, even the floor, was full of flowers. I had nightgowns and bed jackets worthy of Rebecca de Winter, the fictional character I still was trying to emulate. Beau’s grandmothers ordered clothes from Paris. Mrs. King handmade exquisite baby dresses. A young prince had been born. Life was perfect.

  My third disaster was about to occur.

  I woke up two days later feeling wonderful. I leaped out of bed and ran to the bathroom to get ready for my constant stream of visitors.

  When I looked in the mirror, something looked odd. I tried to smile. One side of my face smiled; the other didn’t. Again and again, I tried to make my mouth move, but the mirror reflected only a horrid lopsided grin. All thoughts of normalcy vanished in the strong revealing light of the morning. This crooked face belonged to a travesty of a woman. I called my mother, who came rushing to my side, as did the doctor.

  “You have Bell’s palsy,” he said. “You had a hard delivery… this is sometimes the aftermath.” To cheer me, he added, “It might go away in a few days. It sometimes leaves no sign at all.” But I noticed that he shook his head sadly as he left.

  Throughout the next few days, the agony continued. The first time the nurses brought in a tray of food, I picked up a fork and took a bite without thinking. I will never forget the sheer horror of seeing scrambled eggs fall from my mouth onto my bed jacket. I dribbled food! My mouth had no muscle strength. I had to carefully hold my mouth to keep food from falling out. I cleared the room first. I did not want anyone to see me.

  Fearful thoughts raced through my mind. I would never again be able to even eat in public. Would my husband leave me? How could I raise a child looking like this? He would be ashamed to acknowledge me as his mother. I was sure people would turn their heads away, unwilling to even look at me. I felt like a caricature, a virtual monster. A desolate future spread before me. In the fifties, self-worth was dependent on how you behaved and how you looked. All of my life, that’s what I had been told was important in a woman. Now to have it swept away in a moment… I was left with very little in myself to value.

  This was the beginning of another crucial walk with the Lord. My unattractiveness as a child had made me understand and care for the underdog. My successful girlhood gave me courage to face the possibility of being in a wheelchair at a young age. My deliverance from that illness had taught me that surrendering my will to His could work miracles. My baby confirmed that belief was the answer to all obstacles. The miracle of my baby, Beau, strengthened my faith and helped me to understand how easily we can lose the things we value too much. We sacrifice to achieve meaningless goals. In the face of real misfortunes, their importance disappears like raindrops.

  I had valued the wrong thing—my looks; now they were gone. I had made an idol of everything valued by the world. I listened to the siren song without asking or consulting God and followed like a hungry goat gobbling up everything. I took my tiny seeds of faith and He moved mountains to deliver me from all evil. I barely thanked Him before I went right out and became as worldly and grasping as before.

  I sought God’s forgiveness. “I have my child, my family, my life, and even the riches I wanted,
” I thought. “I will survive the Bell’s palsy. I will be grateful, not greedy. I will praise God all the days of my life.”

  Three days later, the Bell’s palsy was gone.

  CHAPTER 7

  A Roman Orgy

  Jump ahead a few years to the end of the decade. It was the late 1950s, World War II and Korea were behind us, and everybody thought anything was possible. Our country was on top. It felt good to be alive in America. I had a glorious, fun-filled life.

  In July 1959, we threw a party considered so scandalous it has people talking even today. Some called it a Roman orgy… We called it a Bacchanal.

  Planning for the authentically themed Roman party meant researching everything Romans did, wore, and ate. We showed a keenness for Roman history that our classroom professors never witnessed. Everybody wanted to distinguish themselves from the next run-of-the-mill Roman slave or Caesar.

  We were thinking of deep debauchery… or what looked like it…

  Our “slaves” were recruited from a local Boy Scout troop and were well paid. They went to sleep on Caesar’s couches at 9 p.m., so they didn’t do much, but they looked adorable. Remember, Romans supped lying down. This was somewhat difficult with slumbering Boy Scouts everywhere. None of the guests minded, however. They were too busy performing, laughing, and admiring themselves. Every minute of the party centered on the stars—the guests! The secret of a good party is to involve the people invited.

  Bill Roberts of Ultra magazine called it “the greatest private party in Houston history.” It’s the party that seems to last longer than the Roman Empire! Decades later, I am still trying to clarify what really happened that evening. Let me say once and for all, the whole thing was more a choreographed pageant than a Roman bacchanal. Not one person got drunk. They were too busy. Besides, it would have been dangerous with all that dancing on the marble floor. This was a party with no purpose except that of amusement. I learned from the bacchanal that for a party to become legendary, the guests must become active participants in the fantasy and merriment. There are no bystanders at a bacchanal.