The First Kiss

In true form, Lori bought tickets for Bill’s birthday in April of 1989 to a Mike & the Mechanics concert at the Universal Amphitheater (remember that?) somewhat in response to Bill being incredulous that Lori had taken our study group cohort Andrew to Les Misérables, which he had never seen. Ultimately, Bill did see the show at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood with the original cast at a special showing along with his friend Dean and enjoyed it immensely.

Back to the show: we started the night imbibing in copious amounts of wine at Miceli’s. After a fortuitous run-in and quick chat with Chester Thompson (drummer that toured with Genesis), we took our seats and Lori in rare form leaned in and in a serious tone inquired “ Why have you never asked me out?” Bill aptly answered, being the good listener that he is, “Because you said the first thing you said to me when I looked at the apartment that you would never date a non-jewish man.” Lori doubts this was truly the “first” thing she said, but then proceeded to kiss him at the show, beginning our 2nd year in law school and a year-long romance.

Everyone in our law school section thought we were going to get married. This put a certain pressure on us and we started talking more seriously about the possibility, and how we would assimilate our religious backgrounds. Lori came from a culturally religious Jewish family, her beloved grandfather was a reform Rabbi in Riverside, California and had a huge impact on Lori’s upbringing. Bill was an only child from a devout Irish-Catholic family and adored his parents.

Bill wanted to work on it and looked into interfaith courses at University of Judaism. We always felt spiritually aligned, shared concrete inherent religious values, and yet didn’t want to disappoint our parents. Lori sought out the advice of Professor Levenson, also an orthodox jew, about whether she should marry Bill and advised, “you have to do what’s right for you, but if I were you, I’d marry him.” How life would have been different if Lori had taken her advice all those years ago! But alas, it was too hard for Lori & Bill to figure out how they would raise kids, Lori’s dad was very ill at the time in his final months of life (which Bill didn’t really know the extent of at the time), in true Romeo & Juliet fashion, they broke up.

They stayed friendly and celebrated graduation. Bill even came to Lori’s Santa Monica apartment for her send-off party when she moved to Bianicka Street in Prague a few years later in 1995.