Flipping a Coin for Dr. Coyne (Part 4)

On June 15^th 1963, a mere 6 months prior, I had attended the SVH semi-formal Capping Dance held at the Hotel Biltmore (Madison Ave. and 43^rd Street in Manhattan).  I wore the same sedate, powder blue fluffy dress that I had worn the year before to my High School Senior dance,  “Evening in Paris,' which was held in the basement auditorium next to Our Lady of Wisdom Academy in Ozone Park, Queens.   In my four year of High School it was the one and only dance ever held at my traditional all girls Catholic School and it was as far from a “big deal” as a church basement is from a fancy Manhattan hotel.  

From the minute I realized that I would be going to the “Moonlight and Mistletoe” Gala at the New York Hilton in midtown Manhattan with the sexiest Intern on the medical staff at St. Vincent’s Hospital, I knew - without a doubt  - that  I was in need of a major make-over.  I had to quickly transform myself from a naive, unsophisticated teenager into a mature, grown-up woman of the world.  The first thing I understood for certain was that my sedate, powder blue dress had to go!   I needed to find another dress and it had to make me into a mature, older woman, overnight.   I enlisted my mother’s help; she was more than willing to oblige.  I’m sure you’ve heard the boastful brag of the Jewish mother, proudly presenting, “My Son, the Doctor!” I guess you’d say this was the case of a Brooklyn-born, Irish-American mother thinking in her mind, “My daughter, and her Doctor!”  So we went shopping together and I picked out, and she paid for, a sleek black dress – strapless except for a see-through black chiffon over-lay.  There was only one basic problem with this dress; it required that I wear a strapless, waist length brassiere under it.  I had never worn or even owned such a contraption and I didn’t think I was going to like it.  I had always hated uncomfortable clothes and this undergarment was the epitome of scratchy, itchy, awkward and unpleasant all rolled into one.   I bought this distressing brassiere nevertheless.  It was a compulsory requirement in order to pull off wearing the grown-woman black dress.

The day of the big dance, I went to get my hair done by a professional beautician.  I couldn't risk anything less than perfection.  Instead of the fantasized outcome I sought, my natural, free-flowing healthy looking hair became as stiff and immovable as that solid, tight and rigid brassiere beneath my dress.

If I can trust my memory for accuracy, my parents drove me from our home in the East New York section of Brooklyn to the nursing school dorm at 158 West 12th Street, and my mother went up with me to my room to help me dress for the dance.   I guess they - honestly, probably mostly my Mom - wanted to witness firsthand, this once in a lifetime, monumental event.  My Dad waited patiently down on the first floor.  When the switchboard called to say that I had a guest in the lobby, my Mother and I came down in the elevator together and my mother discretely disappeared into the energized crowd that was forming there.    I made them both promise emphatically "not to be seen". I would have died of mortification, if they were discovered watching me leave for my date.    I look back and feel foolish for being such a silly, little girl.   But now, the moment of truth has arrived. I see Dr. J.J. Coyne standing near the entrance way in his distinguished dress wool overcoat. Oh dear God, give me strength, and legs don't fail me now.