Prime Time - Jane Fonda [76]
In 2008, former U.S. surgeon general Dr. David Satcher invited Bill to come to Atlanta and merge the Center for Sexuality and Religion with the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine. Bill recently retired from being a professor at the medical school and assistant director of its Center of Excellence for Sexual Health.
Reverend Bill Stayton and his bride, Kathy.
“Tell me about your relationship,” I prompted.
“Well, first of all, I fell in love the minute I saw her,” Bill answered with relish. “It was at freshman orientation; I was a sophomore and Kathy was a freshman. I was entertaining at a church youth group at the school and I saw her. It took several weeks to find out who she was so I could ask her out.”
After their first date, Bill said, “I wrote my parents and said, ‘I have met the person.’ ”
“How long did it take you to fall in love with Bill, Kathy?”
“Oh, gosh. Six months?” They both laughed.
“She went home to meet my parents at Christmas,” Bill recalled. “Then we got engaged in February and married in September of the next year. So, we knew each other just a year. We often say we got married to have sex.” They had both been virgins.
Kathy added, “That’s not really the right reason.… You know, though, it worked out for us.”
The Long Haul
I wanted to know what they credited their longevity as a couple to. “Fifty-five years!” I exclaimed, “It’s hard to find one person who is not only good for the early, family-building stage but is still good in the post-children stage.”
“I always knew, right from the beginning,” Kathy said, “that people didn’t expect young people’s marriages to last. So I was determined I wasn’t going to be like what people expected.”
“We had some tears in there, and conflicts,” Bill interjected, wanting me to know that it hadn’t all been an easy run.
“Yes,” said Kathy, “but we knew our love for each other was strong, even though, at times, we may not have liked each other. When we had differences I could always say to myself, ‘This too shall pass,’ and not worry that our love was threatened. Besides, we have shared values, we enjoy the same types of entertainment—theater, classical music, art museums, film—and we’ve never harbored jealousy of the friends of the opposite sex each of us have.”
Bill smiled at his wife. “I have never, ever thought of separation or divorce. It has never been a part of me.” He added that one hard time “was during the feminist period where Kathy felt she had been with her parents and then with me and she had never been her own person.”
“I went from one dependency to another,” Kathy explained. “At first, when Bill was in seminary, I worked—we both worked. That was survival. But after the first child, I did not work for a number of years. Or, rather, I should say I didn’t get paid for a number of years.”
“Ah yes,” I interjected. “Unpaid labor? You mean you became a homemaker?”
“You got it! But in the seventies, when Bill began his postdoctoral work and his career at the University of Pennsylvania, I went back to work as an administrative assistant and a middle school music teacher. Yet my responsibilities at home didn’t lessen. We were not in a financial position to hire housekeeping or landscaping help, and I was the one who negotiated help from our children. I made a decent salary to help pay for one of our kids to go to college. But