A Love Story Orchestrated By God by Henry Drake III

The story could begin in many places, but I’ll start with the night we met. She was on a date, but not with me. Instead, she was with my good friend Travis and there they sat, side-by-side in the backseat of my father’s brand new ‘57 Buick Roadmaster with me as chauffeur. My date, about whom I have no memory whatsoever, sat beside me as I stared into the rearview mirror at the most beautiful red-headed girl I’d ever seen in my life. It’s a wonder I didn’t wreck the car that night, I was so busy studying her face. I was instantly in love with this person sitting behind me and I would continue to be for the rest of my life. 

Anne Frazer was born and grew up in Mobile, AL in a large family with many, many cousins whom she knew and loved. She went to Murphy High School and graduated in 1957. In the fall of that year, she left home to attend Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga where several of her family members had previously been students. 

That same year her father, who had worked for a bank all his adult life, thought that in order to better himself financially, he needed to get a job in a different profession. His search led him to accept a job with U.S. Steel, and in 1957 he moved his family to Birmingham.

 I attended Shades Valley High School in Birmingham where I was a member of the same high school fraternity as my friend Travis. However, my friend was a year ahead of me in school. After he graduated in 1955, he went to Auburn University where he joined ATO social fraternity his freshman year. The next year, after I graduated, I moved to Charlottesville, VA where I attended the University of Virginia. Even though I received a bid from a more prestigious fraternity, I chose to pledge ATO because of its good reputation in Birmingham. No one back home would have even heard of the other fraternity. And so Travis and I became fraternity brothers, him in Alabama, me in Virginia.

At the end of Travis’s first year at Auburn, he decided to transfer to a different college, and he chose…the University of Virginia. To this day I do not know his reasons, but suddenly we were at the same college in the same fraternity, and because he couldn’t bring all his course work with him when he transferred, we were also both freshmen.

Meanwhile, the move to Birmingham by Anne’s family meant that she would be coming home for her first Christmas break to Birmingham. She would not know anyone, and all her high school friends would be returning to Mobile. She did, however, have a blind date arranged with Travis. Neither he nor Anne could remember how the date came about, but we guessed that maybe some of Anne’s parents’ new friends had set them up. They had a good time and Travis asked her for a second date, that was the one where I fell in love with her.

Both Travis and I had more dates with Anne that Christmas and when we all were getting ready to return to school, she promised she would write to both of us at UVA. She kept her word, and I remember that she wrote to one of us with red ink on white paper and to the other with white ink on red paper. I believe she must have been thinking ahead to dating both of us the next summer and trying to keep us straight.

When the end of that school year came, Travis and I were talking about Anne. It was clear that we were both interested in dating her, and she had said she would be in Birmingham all summer. I told Travis that I was going to see if she would marry me. That took him (and me) by surprise. I don’t believe he ever asked her for another date after that. So I took Anne out as much as I could afford that summer. 

One night in the middle of July we went to a supper club in Vestavia called Joe’s Ranch House. It‘s gone now, building and all. As we left, Anne was acting very silly and I bet her that I could make her stop acting that way. 

“No you can’t,” she said. 

I replied, “I want you to marry me!”

Looking back, I’m thankful she didn’t say, “Take me home!” Instead she asked, “Why haven’t you even kissed me?” I quickly took care of that problem. Anne wisely did not give me an answer to my proposal that night, nor on our many dates over the rest of the summer. I didn’t push my luck, but by the end of August she said yes, she would be my wife. 

There was a however, however, because I had two more years of college. Anne said she could not sit alone in the dorm and study for two years, so we would keep our engagement secret and she would keep on dating. We agreed to write letters every day and see each other on holidays. During that time, she did date a boy from Birmingham named Jon who was a SAE at Georgia Tech. Every day that her letter was late or missing, the ATO house exploded with chants, “Jon and the SAEs are having a house party!”

Back in the 1950s there was no texting and long distance calls cost money; so other than the letters there were only holidays, a call every once in a while, and a few visits when I would go to Atlanta or Anne would come to UVA.

On Friday, October 30, 1959 Anne was coming to see me, flying from Atlanta to Washington DC on Delta Airlines and then on to Charlottesville on Piedmont Airlines. The trip would take most of the day. I was having breakfast that morning at the ATO house and talking about how I did not want to wait all day to see Anne. I didn’t have a car of my own at school, so I decided to borrow one and surprise her in Washington after the Delta flight. The drive from Charlottesville to Washington was about 100 miles. I borrowed a car from a friend named Warner, and after breakfast I drove to Washington and began to search Delta gates for Anne’s flight from Atlanta. Finally, there she was and it was such a happy (and surprising for her) meeting.

The Piedmont Airlines flight on which Anne had been booked took off without her that day, heading from Washington to Charlottesville as planned. At the time of its departure, we loaded up in Warner’s car for the drive back to UVA. But that flight, Piedmont 349, never made it to Charlottesville. The airplane, a Douglas DC-3, crashed on Bucks Elbow Mountain near Crozet, Virginia killing the entire crew of three, and 23 of its 24 passengers. A man named Ernest Philip Bradley, who was on stand-by for 349 having missed his earlier flight that day, was the sole survivor. When a passenger did not show up at the last minute, Phil had been given her seat on that plane. Phil was the last one to board, taking the only open seat on the back row, and as a result, his life was miraculously spared. At the time of the crash, he saw a vivid vision of Jesus and heard Him clearly say, “Be concerned not, I’ll be with you always.” A terrible tragedy and two glorious miracles took place that day, 26 precious lives lost, two precious lives saved.

  That Christmas, Anne’s parents announced our engagement and we were married in Birmingham the following summer on June 24, 1960. Four years later, the Lord called us to Himself through the ministry of Frank Barker the pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church. Our marriage was good and very good, and also difficult and very difficult for sixty-two years. It never could have lasted except for the love both of us had for Jesus Christ and for one another. That is the only explanation because there was simply no other way.

Together, Anne and I have four children and ten grandchildren. Each and every one of them are miracles of God, and they have all been placed on this earth for very specific and special purposes.

Anne passed away on February 6, 2023 at the age of 83 and is now with the Lord in heaven. This stage of our marriage is the separation. How long this stage is meant to last, only God knows, but at some time in the future I will go and join her and I believe the first thing I will see is that same beautiful face I first fell in love with in the rear view mirror.