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beautiful
     girl in the world walked up and asked me a question. Her name was Betty Watson. Looking
     at her my heart began to thump. My tongue got tied. I was having trouble getting the
     words out. She gave me a pass.
    I’d seen Betty around and on a few occasions heard her talking about sports. I figured
     that was my ace in the hole. Roger Bannister had just broken the four-minute mile
     so I played that card. She responded enthusiastically. I asked her some other stuff.
     She had answers. It turned out she was an athlete. Her life centered on sports and
     games. In ping-pong when Betty was my opponent I got killed. She could fish. I’d bring
     in a minnow and she would hook a whale. There was nothing she couldn’t play and nothing
     she couldn’t do.
    I’d never met a woman like Betty. In the south, at that time, if you wore a dress,
     sweat was a sin. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. She was beautiful, smart, funny,
     generous, and best of all she had pants and sneakers too. We started thinking about
     a future. She told her parents she’d met a guy. They were overjoyed. She explained
     I had a child. They were underwhelmed. I could understand it. Like any parentthey wanted the best for their daughter. Becoming a wife and mother on the same day
     could be tough. Maybe for someone else but not for Betty. She had the biggest heart
     I’d ever seen.
    She said she’d be my wife. The next day we went to the courthouse and tied the knot.
     The date was July 11, 1955. Her parents weren’t happy. It wasn’t that they didn’t
     like me it was just that they could see trouble ahead. They were right.
    We went back to Roswell. I had my hands full coaching everything in sight. One day
     she told me she would take the girl’s basketball team off my hands. I let her have
     it. They got better. I can tell you a thousand things that made Betty special or I
     can tell you one. She was the most enthusiastic person I’d ever met. And it was that
     enthusiasm that made others excited.
    We were a team. Betty was my wife, lover, confidante, and best friend. I didn’t know
     how I had gotten to that point without her. One day she came home with a smile on
     her face. She said she was hungry. I asked what she wanted. She replied, “A pickle
     and a shake. Put a little Tabasco on top.” Nine months later she delivered Angela.
     The date was August 19, 1956.
    An opportunity opened up south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Betty and I talked about it
     and decided it was time to go. In 1960, we moved to Alexandria, Virginia. It was a
     major step for us. It was a different world. Being next to Washington, D.C., we thought
     we were in the center of the universe. It was nice that they didn’t roll up the streets
     at noon but there was a cost associated with that. Alexandriawas much more expensive and we had a hard time making ends meet. But in her typical
     Betty Watson fashion she kept all the balls in the air while I worked on my career.
    I had a job at Hammond High School teaching and coaching. Hammond sat in the most
     prestigious part of Alexandria and if the kids I coached didn’t have silver spoons
     in their mouths it was because they were getting dry-cleaned. Initially I coached
     track and the junior varsity football team. I was having success doing both. We were
     raising our two daughters and things were moving on.
    Betty got pregnant again. A lot of things have been said about me over the years;
     good and bad but nobody has ever said Bill Yoast couldn’t make kids. Sheryl arrived
     February 5, 1962.
BLACK CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON
    It was 1964 and my football team had just gone undefeated. I decided to go home early
     one afternoon and celebrate with Betty. When I arrived she wasn’t there but I could
     hear some loud music coming from Bonnie Jean’s room. I was surprised because she should
     have been at school. I knocked on the door and walked in. On the table, a container
     filled with incense was burning to the beat