Forgotten Flowers: Loving People You Know and You Don't Know

By Tom Ervin

Does love permeate your life?

Do you feel as close to family members as you should? Do you feel you are making a real difference in your community with your life? All these i

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors' Tranquility Press
• Release date: Jul 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958554647

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by Tom Ervin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Tom Ervin/Author’s Tranquility Press

2706 Station Club Drive SW

Marietta, GA 30060

www.authorstranquilitypress.com

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the address above.

Forgotten Flowers: Loving People You Know and You Don’t

Know/ Tom Ervin

Paperback: 978-1-958554-63-0

eBook: 978-1-958554-64-7

Contents

Nancy

My Premise

Loving People We Know

Loving Yourself

How to Improve Your Self-Esteem

The Evil of Egomania

Romantic Love

How to Keep the Romance Alive

Unconditional Love

Loving Family Members

Loving People We Don’t Know

The Story of Alan Turing

Forgotten Flowers on Detroit Streets

Forgotten Flowers on the Battlefield

Forgotten Flowers in Inner-City Schools

Schools Coping Skills (A Survival Story)

Single Parents

The Elderly

Veterans

Is There a Forgotten Flower You Will Help?

People You Know

People You Don’t Know

How Can You Love the Forgotten Flowers?

Your Decision

To Nancy

Thanks for all your love, patience, and support these fifty-eight years!

Nancy

Before we begin, I want to introduce my wife, Nancy. After fifty-eight years of marriage, I have learned about the countless ways she has enriched my life and, frankly, the lives of everyone she meets. Because she is mentioned in this book and has contributed to its content, I want you to meet her.

It happened on the day after Thanksgiving in 1962, when I was twenty-two and she was twenty-one. I was a senior at the University of Detroit, majoring in marketing, and she was a junior at Marygrove College, a women’s college, majoring in economics. We had both, unknowingly, been invited by our respective professors to attend a career day being offered by the owner of Hudson’s Department Store for those seeking business careers.

About forty students from various colleges in the Detroit area were gathered in the store’s auditorium for a presentation on the merits of a career at Hudson’s. After the presentation, we were taken on a tour of the store and its many departments. It was then that I saw her walking about twenty feet ahead of me. She was wearing a bright red dress and heels. On the front of her dress was a series of little heart-shaped black buttons. She was tall and had an attractive way of walking. To top it off, she had a beautiful face, with blue eyes and a little chin that dipped downward. At first glance, she was a knockout! I couldn’t take my eyes off her throughout the tour, which lasted about a half hour. Later, she told me that she had spotted me also and wanted to attract me, even though she’d thought I needed a haircut. Well, she didn’t just attract me. She owned me!

After the tour, we had lunch in the cafeteria. When I looked for her, I was happy to see she had a seat available next to her. We talked all through lunch, and I learned where she went to school and where she lived. Her name was Nancy, and her dad was the police chief in a neighboring suburb not far from my house. I know you won’t believe this, but after lunch, we both went our separate ways without my getting her last name and phone number. Two days later, I had the bright idea that I would call her dad’s police station and ask for her last name and phone number! When the police dispatcher answered my call, I explained that I had just met Nancy and wanted to take her out on a date but needed her last name and phone number. She replied, Oh, that’s our Nancy! She then proceeded to give me the missing information. (You and I know that couldn’t happen today.) When I called her and told her I was Tom Ervin, who met her at Hudson’s, she said, Yes, I remember!

We were married twenty months later, after I had enlisted in the Navy reserves and she had graduated. As the years went by, our family grew to six children. Nancy gave birth to four boys, and we adopted two girls. We also brought nine other children into our home, each of whom stayed with us up to a year until being adopted through various adoption agencies. As you will see later on in this book, we also became quite involved with children in Detroit’s inner city. Everything we did, we did together.

We started eight different businesses, including a very successful publishing business that Nancy created and managed for many years. That company paid for the private high school tuition and college degrees of all our children. They had no student loans, except for one of our daughters who took out a loan to finance her law degree after receiving her bachelor degree at the University of Michigan. Two of Nancy’s greatest attributes are kindness and courage. Her favorite saying is, Keep on marching!

My Premise

The wildflowers on the cover of this book will never become part