Insight: A Fortuitous Twist of Fate

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

If you haven’t heard this story before, it’s one I’m proud of and especially today.

Ed and Nancy Pierce were married in Cleveland, Ohio on
June 11, 2005 and are celebrating their 21st wedding
anniversary. COURTESY PHOTO

Back in 2004, I was trying to reestablish myself after a year of riding a roller coaster with a girlfriend who was always raining when the sun was shining. She was like Joe Btfsplk, a character in the old Lil’ Abner newspaper comic strip who brought disastrous misfortune and accidents to anyone in his vicinity with a small, dark rain cloud perpetually hovering over his head to symbolize his bad luck.

I didn’t see it at first following that nasty breakup, but my world was about to change forever for the better.

Following years of being single and constantly looking for the right person, I agreed to meet a woman near where we lived in Florida for ice cream, and it turned out to be the best date that I had ever had. She was funny, good looking, had a good job as an elementary school teacher, and could carry on a conversation.

I resolved to see her again, and when I called to ask her for another date, to my surprise, she said she’d like that.

We spoke again on the phone before that second date but told me she had some news that might scrap those plans. It seems that after our first date, she visited a doctor and had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was having surgery to remove a lump the following week with an uncertain future of chemotherapy and radiation after that.

She told me she understood that having survived a bout with cancer myself, if I wanted to back away because of her diagnosis I could.

Having spent more than a year of my life undergoing cancer surgeries, chemotherapy and visits to the oncologist, I knew how worried she was. I shared my own cancer recovery story with her and told her if I could overcome what I did, she certainly could too.

I spent that summer checking up on her, making sure she was eating, and helping however I could.

By that fall when school started again, I was amazed that despite frequent appointments for chemo and radiation, she was back in her classroom and teaching students.

When Christmas break arrived, she came by with her dog to spend the holidays and never went home. She moved out of her apartment and into my condo. Sometime in January 2005, she told me her youngest son was graduating from high school in June in Cleveland, Ohio and wanted to fly there from Florida for that. She asked if I wanted to accompany her there and see where she had been living before getting divorced and moving to Florida.

The more I thought about it, I thought it could be a great time to also get married, and I mentioned that to her while watching coverage of the Michael Jackson trial on television one evening. She thought that would be great and said she had friends where we could possibly have a small wedding.

Those friends agreed to host a wedding at their home, and I found a wedding officiant online who was available that weekend. She knew a bakery there that baked a wedding cake for us. She bought a dress for $1 at a thrift shop to get married in. She made the invitations herself, and I found a restaurant and bar on Lake Erie that had been a favorite of many celebrities passing through Cleveland where we could have a wedding reception.

A few days before the wedding, we met the minister who was going to marry us. He was happy to do so and asked if he could come to the reception and bring his wife, however we couldn’t afford two more meals and he said he understood.

Just a day before the wedding, I went to a recommended barber and recoiled when I saw the haircut that I’d received. It was disappointing but I decided to make the most of it. 

During the wedding ceremony late that Saturday afternoon, the minister suddenly deviated from the script and told our wedding guests how he knew we were meant to be married. He said on Friday evening he had been admitted to the hospital in pain and had to pass a kidney stone. Once it was over, he told his physician that he was supposed to marry us the next day and when he woke up on Saturday morning, he was well enough to be discharged from the hospital.

He told our wedding guests that in his opinion, his speedy recovery from passing the kidney stone had to be divine intervention and that’s how he knew that we were meant to be married. I was a bit shocked, but it seemed to fit with everything else about this wedding.

This year on June 11, Nancy and I will celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary and I have never regretted a moment of our lives together. We’ve gone from Florida to New Hampshire to Maine and each working strenuous fulltime jobs to semi-retirement.

It’s been a great life and even though there have been obstacles along the way, I’m truly a very lucky man. <