Posting the below for no other reason than it's a nice story.
She arrived at JFK airport in 1971 and two men were waiting for her. Here’s how she ended up married to one of themThe arrivals hall at John F. Kennedy International Airport on September 3, 1971, was teeming with people. Among the crowds was 24-year-old Linda Ford, clutching her suitcase, her life about to change forever.
But right then, in that exact moment, Linda wasn’t aware she was on the brink of something. Right then, she simply felt “rather weary.”
Linda was in JFK ahead of starting a year’s teaching post at the City University of New York. She was excited to continue her academic career, to experience a new city – but relocating across the Atlantic was daunting.
Linda knew no one in the United States. While she’d left her home in southeast England before – she’d spent a stint as a postgraduate student in Paris researching the French Revolution – New York City felt particularly far. The transatlantic flight was the longest she’d ever taken. Linda landed, severely jet lagged and more than a little apprehensive.
“New York is a wonderful city,” Linda tells CNN Travel today. “But it’s a bit fearsome for someone who hasn’t been there before, a woman on her own.”
But Linda was searching for someone in the arrivals hall: George Porter. He was pretty much a stranger – a man she’d never met – but he was a friend of a friend who’d agreed to meet her off the flight.
Linda knew next to nothing about George. But after the mutual acquaintance linked them up, they’d exchanged a couple of transatlantic letters. In Linda’s note, she detailed exactly what she’d be wearing when she arrived at JFK – figuring that information would help George track her down.
“I’ll wear a pink and white top, paired with beige-colored trousers,” she wrote.
“I have absolutely no idea what I’ll be wearing,” replied George.
Linda arrived in New York City “in precisely the clothes I described.” At the airport, she glanced around, searching the throngs of people. Then her eye landed on two men, standing side by side, both looking at her expectantly.
One was tall, dark-haired, with a mustache and a smile on his face. The other was a dashing employee of Air France, wearing an airline uniform.
“Are you Linda Dean?” asked the dark-haired man. He had a Southern US accent.
Then the second man said hello. He had a French accent.
Linda looked from man to man, bemused.
“I was in the rather strange position of arriving at a very busy airport, in a country I’d never visited before, and being met by not just one, but two very nice young men,” Linda recalls today.
The dark-haired, mustachioed man “was George,” Linda soon realized.
The Air France guy was the wild card. This was Jean-Claude, another friend of a friend who she’d never met, also there, unexpectedly, to greet Linda. Jean-Claude was married, it turned out, to the cousin of a girl Linda had known in Paris.
Rest of the story here:
She arrived at JFK airport in 1971 and two men were waiting for her. Here’s how she ended up married to one of them
