Calkins: They fell in love. Broke up for seven decades. Then they found each other again.
Bill Moore (left) and Martha Threlkeld Brandon are now neighbors at The Village. (Geoff Calkins/The Daily Memphian)
Geoff Calkins
Geoff Calkins has been chronicling Memphis and Memphis sports for more than two decades. He is host of "The Geoff Calkins Show" from 9-11 a.m. M-F on 92.9 FM. Calkins has been named the best sports columnist in the country five times by the Associated Press sports editors, but still figures his best columns are about the people who make Memphis what it is.
More than seven decades later, Bill Moore has a vivid memory of the moment he asked Martha McClanahan to marry him.
“We were on Flirtation Walk,” he said. “Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s the walk at West Point where couples would walk and be together. Now, during my time, cadets couldn’t even hold hands with their girlfriends. It was against regulations.”
So no hand-holding was involved. But when Moore’s mother and brother drove Martha from Memphis to West Point for a visit in 1948, he popped the question anyway.
“I asked her to marry me,” he said. “I asked her if she’d wait. She said she would. But, well, there’s a lot of realities in life.”
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