Former senator falls in love

[+ WmClarke]

Former Pennsylvania senator to marry a man.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/harris-wofford-to-marry-man-222358

 

50 year age difference?!

 

There's hope for me!

[+ stevenkesslar]

Former Pennsylvania senator to marry a man.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/harris-wofford-to-marry-man-222358

 

50 year age difference?!

 

There's hope for me!

 

http://www.washingtonlife.com/issues/2003-11/bestbuddies/images/037.jpg

 

"Wofford, who says he was convinced he would never find love again, met Matthew Charlton, his husband-to-be, while visiting Florida 15 years ago.

Fifty years separate the two in age with “far different professional interests,” but Wofford said the two clicked."

 

Guys, can you help me out here?

 

I'm kinda thinking this means there really is hope for me and BVB, after all.

 

Can you all try convincing BVB that Josh just isn't really his type?

 

http://www.feelguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Barro22.jpg

 

I mean, it takes more than just clowning around to get to the top of the young stud's Barr-O-Meter.

[bigvalboy]

I'm kinda thinking this means there really is hope for me and BVB, after all.

 

Can you all try convincing BVB that Josh just isn't really his type?

 

http://www.feelguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Barro22.jpg

dahlin, in case you've haven't been reading my posts, there is only one type I have...

 

http://thumb9.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/2677924/372357862/stock-photo-nerd-man-with-glasses-deal-love-bow-and-arrow-with-money-from-cupid-for-valentine-day-372357862.jpg

SHOW ME DA MONEY....

[+ stevenkesslar]

dahlin, in case you've haven't been reading my posts, there is only one type I have...

 

http://thumb9.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/2677924/372357862/stock-photo-nerd-man-with-glasses-deal-love-bow-and-arrow-with-money-from-cupid-for-valentine-day-372357862.jpg

SHOW ME DA MONEY....

 

Now we're talking, BVB

 

 

I may be an old whore, but I'm a calculating old whore. And I figured out the way to your heart a long, long time ago..............

 

https://www.investor.gov/tools/calculators/compound-interest-calculator

 

 

[Truth of the matter is I had him at "compound" ]

[bigvalboy]

Ha! ain't love grand...too bad it's all bullshit.http://www.picgifs.com/smileys/smileys-and-emoticons/yes-and-no/smileys-yes-and-no-979269.gif

[+ stevenkesslar]

Ha! ain't love grand...too bad it's all bullshit.

 

Awwwwww Sweetie.............how can I make it better?

 

Sounds like somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

 

[edjames]

Also reported in today's NYTimes is Wofford's account of his love story. Personally, I found it touching, and yes, gives hope to everyone that love is possible at any age.

 

Finding Love Again, This Time With a Man

 

By HARRIS WOFFORDAPRIL 23, 2016

 

AT age 70, I did not imagine that I would fall in love again and remarry. But the past 20 years have made my life a story of two great loves.

 

On Jan. 3, 1996, the telephone rang just before midnight, interrupting the silence of the hospital room. From the bedside of my wife, Clare, I lifted the receiver. “Please hold for the president.” Bill Clinton had heard that Clare, struck by acute leukemia, was fading. She listened and smiled but was too weak to speak.

 

Some hours later, I held her hands in mine as she died. During 48 years of marriage, we had spent a lifetime together.

 

In the cold spring that followed, I felt grateful to be alive, lucky to have many friends and family members, and glad for a challenging assignment from President Clinton involving national service. But I also wondered what it would be like living by myself for the rest of my life. I was sure I would never again feel the kind of love Clare and I shared.

 

Clare and I fell in love trying to save the world during World War II. I had founded a student organization to promote a postwar union of democracies to keep the peace. When I left to serve in the Army Air Corps, Clare became national president, guiding the Student Federalists as the group grew across the country.

 

Our romance and adventure continued for five decades. When I was running for election to the Senate in 1991, Clare gave up her job to become an all-out campaigner, helping us win in a landslide. In my narrow losing re-election campaign of 1994, astute Pennsylvanians observed that if Clare had been the candidate, she would have won.

 

We spent a happy half-century together with different perspectives on life. Growing up during the Depression, in which her father suffered while my family prospered, she became a skeptic while I emerged an optimist.

 

In 1963, we enjoyed visiting the philosopher Martin Buber in his quiet Jerusalem study. In his “Paths in Utopia,” Buber says a good and great idea will rise again when idea and fate meet in a creative hour. Hopefully, I asked him if he saw that creative hour coming soon to achieve peace for Israelis and Palestinians. Before he could answer, Clare laughed skeptically, saying, “From what I’ve seen, it will be a long time coming.”

 

Buber said to Clare, “You are right, that the time between creative hours can be very long, but they do come, and I hope that when one comes, your realism will not make you miss it.” And as we parted, he told me, “You are obviously a romantic, my friend, and I hope you recognize that a romantic needs a realist like Clare.”

 

For our three children and me, Clare was at the heart of our family. When I told her, “You’re my best friend,” she would reply, “and your best critic.” And when I said, “You’re my best critic,” she responded, “and your best friend.”

 

We were both about to turn 70 when she died. I assumed that I was too old to seek or expect another romance. But five years later, standing on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., I sensed a creative hour and did not want to miss it.

 

It was afternoon, and the tanning beachgoers faced west, toward the wall of concrete buildings lining the boulevard, to catch the sun, ignoring the beautiful sea. I swam alone in the water, attracting the attention of two bystanders near the shore. They came over to say hello, which is how I met Matthew Charlton.

 

As we talked, I was struck by Matthew’s inquisitive and thoughtful manner and his charm. I knew he was somebody I would enjoy getting to know. We were decades apart in age with far different professional interests, yet we clicked.

 

I admired Matthew’s adventurous 25-year-old spirit. When he told me that I was “young at heart,” I liked the idea, until I saw a picture of him on a snowboard upside down executing a daring back flip. The Jackson Hole newspaper carried the caption, “Charlton landed the jump without mishap.”

 

We took trips around the country and later to Europe together, becoming great friends. We both felt the immediate spark, and as time went on, we realized that our bond had grown into love. Other than with Clare, I had never felt love blossom this way before.

 

It was three years before I got the nerve to tell my sons and daughter about Matthew. I brought a scrapbook of photographs, showing Matthew and me on our travels, to a large family wedding. It was not the direct discussion the subject deserved. Yet over time my children have welcomed Matthew as a member of the family, while Matthew’s parents have accepted me warmly.

 

To some, our bond is entirely natural, to others it comes as a strange surprise, but most soon see the strength of our feelings and our devotion to each other. We have now been together for 15 years.

 

Too often, our society seeks to label people by pinning them on the wall — straight, gay or in between. I don’t categorize myself based on the gender of those I love. I had a half-century of marriage with a wonderful woman, and now am lucky for a second time to have found happiness.

 

For a long time, I did not suspect that idea and fate might meet in my lifetime to produce same-sex marriage equality. My focus was on other issues facing our nation, especially advancing national service for all. Seeking to change something as deeply ingrained in law and public opinion as the definition of marriage seemed impossible.

 

I was wrong, and should not have been so pessimistic. I had seen firsthand — working and walking with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — that when the time was right, major change for civil rights came to pass in a single creative decade. It is right to expand our conception of marriage to include all Americans who love each other.

 

Matthew is very different from Clare. The political causes that continue to move me do not preoccupy him, nor have I turned my priorities to design, the focus of his driving talent. Still, the same force of love is at work bringing two people together.

 

That instinctive emotion gives me new appreciation for these words from Robert Frost:

• And yet for all this help of head and brain
  How happily instinctive we remain,
  Our best guide upward further to the light,
  Passionate preference such as love at sight.
   
  Twice in my life, I’ve felt the pull of such passionate preference. At age 90, I am lucky to be in an era where the Supreme Court has strengthened what President Obama calls “the dignity of marriage” by recognizing that matrimony is not based on anyone’s sexual nature, choices or dreams. It is based on love.
   
  All this is on my mind as Matthew and I prepare for our marriage ceremony. On April 30, at ages 90 and 40, we will join hands, vowing to be bound together: to have and to hold, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.
   
  

[MrMiniver]

I thought his op-ed in the Times was lovely until I googled and found out that the boyfriend was 25 when they met and he was 75. I mean c'mon. Give me a fucking break.

I asked a lawyer friend "what's the point of getting married at 90?" His response:

 

Estate taxes. Exactly.

[+ stevenkesslar]

I thought his op-ed in the Times was lovely until I googled and found out that the boyfriend was 25 when they met and he was 75. I mean c'mon. Give me a fucking break.

 

AT age 70, I did not imagine that I would fall in love again and remarry. But the past 20 years have made my life a story of two great loves.

 

Sounds like a lot of us are waking up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

 

http://lupusuva1phototherapy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/wrongside.png

 

Even if it is about tax breaks, sounds like our young Matthew has paid for it with 20 years of what feels like love.

 

Maybe we all just need a fucking break like that.

 

Then again, maybe BVB called it right.

 

When it comes to money, I'm stickin with Josh for financial advice

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1qkfGEwHz4

 

What is it about Josh talkin inflation that is so damn sexy?

 

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmi6bbXKoS1qdcjp2.gif

 

[Oops. Never mind. He's only 31].

[body2body]

Back in the 70s I played on a softball team in a Gay League. This was a novelty then. Our team was sponsored by a West Hollywood Bar. One of our best players was a hunky blond. He was a well known porn star, worked for Falcon. I had a crush on him, along with most of the team. A friend of his told me I didn't stand a chance, I wasn't old enough. I didn't understand until few weeks later. We had gone back to the bar one Sunday Afternoon after a win to celebrate. A man in his 70s came up to our group and tapped him on the shoulder. Our blond porn star turned and lit up with a beaming look of affection, took him in his arms and kissed him. Our guy was normally shy and quiet, but with his partner there he laughed, and was more animated than usual. He introduced his friend to us and it was obvious that these two had a strong mutual attraction. Two years later they moved to ranch near Mt. Shasta. I hope they enjoyed many happy years there.

 

The members of this Forum should understand better than most that love can take many forms, and when I read a story like this, I think it's best to wish them well and celebrate the diversity of love. Maybe they married for tax reasons, maybe not. Just be happy for them. Love doesn't come along all that often in our lives.

[marylander1940]

 

"Wofford, who says he was convinced he would never find love again, met Matthew Charlton, his husband-to-be, while visiting Florida 15 years ago.

Fifty years separate the two in age with “far different professional interests,” but Wofford said the two clicked."

 

Guys, can you help me out here?

 

I'm kinda thinking this means there really is hope for me and BVB, after all.

 

Can you all try convincing BVB that Josh just isn't really his type?

 

http://www.feelguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Barro22.jpg

 

I mean, it takes more than just clowning around to get to the top of the young stud's Barr-O-Meter.

 

Josh is very hot, just make sure he keeps going to the gym and eating healthy.

 

 

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/joshbarro/files/2012/04/josh-peak-fatness.jpg

[+ stevenkesslar]

Josh is very hot, just make sure he keeps going to the gym and eating healthy.

 

Had to go and spill the beans, didn't ya?

 

I already said on another thread that once you've had BVB, nobody else will do.

 

Now you all know why.

 

I mean, the man is a sex machine. When he found Josh the kid was kind of chunky. But after the incessant morning noon and night fucking he sure got Josh trimmed down into stud shape.

 

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/joshbarro/files/2012/04/josh-peak-fatness.jpg http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/24/85/5c/24855c7a0e8d3dad28d6ab930d038a65.jpg

[Bearofdistinction]

Also reported in today's NYTimes is Wofford's account of his love story. Personally, I found it touching, and yes, gives hope to everyone that love is possible at any age.

 

Finding Love Again, This Time With a Man

 

By HARRIS WOFFORDAPRIL 23, 2016

 

AT age 70, I did not imagine that I would fall in love again and remarry. But the past 20 years have made my life a story of two great loves.

 

On Jan. 3, 1996, the telephone rang just before midnight, interrupting the silence of the hospital room. From the bedside of my wife, Clare, I lifted the receiver. “Please hold for the president.” Bill Clinton had heard that Clare, struck by acute leukemia, was fading. She listened and smiled but was too weak to speak.

 

Some hours later, I held her hands in mine as she died. During 48 years of marriage, we had spent a lifetime together.

 

In the cold spring that followed, I felt grateful to be alive, lucky to have many friends and family members, and glad for a challenging assignment from President Clinton involving national service. But I also wondered what it would be like living by myself for the rest of my life. I was sure I would never again feel the kind of love Clare and I shared.

 

Clare and I fell in love trying to save the world during World War II. I had founded a student organization to promote a postwar union of democracies to keep the peace. When I left to serve in the Army Air Corps, Clare became national president, guiding the Student Federalists as the group grew across the country.

 

Our romance and adventure continued for five decades. When I was running for election to the Senate in 1991, Clare gave up her job to become an all-out campaigner, helping us win in a landslide. In my narrow losing re-election campaign of 1994, astute Pennsylvanians observed that if Clare had been the candidate, she would have won.

 

We spent a happy half-century together with different perspectives on life. Growing up during the Depression, in which her father suffered while my family prospered, she became a skeptic while I emerged an optimist.

 

In 1963, we enjoyed visiting the philosopher Martin Buber in his quiet Jerusalem study. In his “Paths in Utopia,” Buber says a good and great idea will rise again when idea and fate meet in a creative hour. Hopefully, I asked him if he saw that creative hour coming soon to achieve peace for Israelis and Palestinians. Before he could answer, Clare laughed skeptically, saying, “From what I’ve seen, it will be a long time coming.”

 

Buber said to Clare, “You are right, that the time between creative hours can be very long, but they do come, and I hope that when one comes, your realism will not make you miss it.” And as we parted, he told me, “You are obviously a romantic, my friend, and I hope you recognize that a romantic needs a realist like Clare.”

 

For our three children and me, Clare was at the heart of our family. When I told her, “You’re my best friend,” she would reply, “and your best critic.” And when I said, “You’re my best critic,” she responded, “and your best friend.”

 

We were both about to turn 70 when she died. I assumed that I was too old to seek or expect another romance. But five years later, standing on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., I sensed a creative hour and did not want to miss it.

 

It was afternoon, and the tanning beachgoers faced west, toward the wall of concrete buildings lining the boulevard, to catch the sun, ignoring the beautiful sea. I swam alone in the water, attracting the attention of two bystanders near the shore. They came over to say hello, which is how I met Matthew Charlton.

 

As we talked, I was struck by Matthew’s inquisitive and thoughtful manner and his charm. I knew he was somebody I would enjoy getting to know. We were decades apart in age with far different professional interests, yet we clicked.

 

I admired Matthew’s adventurous 25-year-old spirit. When he told me that I was “young at heart,” I liked the idea, until I saw a picture of him on a snowboard upside down executing a daring back flip. The Jackson Hole newspaper carried the caption, “Charlton landed the jump without mishap.”

 

We took trips around the country and later to Europe together, becoming great friends. We both felt the immediate spark, and as time went on, we realized that our bond had grown into love. Other than with Clare, I had never felt love blossom this way before.

 

It was three years before I got the nerve to tell my sons and daughter about Matthew. I brought a scrapbook of photographs, showing Matthew and me on our travels, to a large family wedding. It was not the direct discussion the subject deserved. Yet over time my children have welcomed Matthew as a member of the family, while Matthew’s parents have accepted me warmly.

 

To some, our bond is entirely natural, to others it comes as a strange surprise, but most soon see the strength of our feelings and our devotion to each other. We have now been together for 15 years.

 

Too often, our society seeks to label people by pinning them on the wall — straight, gay or in between. I don’t categorize myself based on the gender of those I love. I had a half-century of marriage with a wonderful woman, and now am lucky for a second time to have found happiness.

 

For a long time, I did not suspect that idea and fate might meet in my lifetime to produce same-sex marriage equality. My focus was on other issues facing our nation, especially advancing national service for all. Seeking to change something as deeply ingrained in law and public opinion as the definition of marriage seemed impossible.

 

I was wrong, and should not have been so pessimistic. I had seen firsthand — working and walking with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — that when the time was right, major change for civil rights came to pass in a single creative decade. It is right to expand our conception of marriage to include all Americans who love each other.

 

Matthew is very different from Clare. The political causes that continue to move me do not preoccupy him, nor have I turned my priorities to design, the focus of his driving talent. Still, the same force of love is at work bringing two people together.

 

That instinctive emotion gives me new appreciation for these words from Robert Frost:

• And yet for all this help of head and brain
  How happily instinctive we remain,
  Our best guide upward further to the light,
  Passionate preference such as love at sight.
   
  Twice in my life, I’ve felt the pull of such passionate preference. At age 90, I am lucky to be in an era where the Supreme Court has strengthened what President Obama calls “the dignity of marriage” by recognizing that matrimony is not based on anyone’s sexual nature, choices or dreams. It is based on love.
   
  All this is on my mind as Matthew and I prepare for our marriage ceremony. On April 30, at ages 90 and 40, we will join hands, vowing to be bound together: to have and to hold, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.
  

 

Wow - Worked for him as a staffer when he was in the Senate and on his re-election campaign. Never a clue - He really did love his wife - it was obvious, he lit up when she came into the room.

 

BTW - Wofford lost a very tight and very nasty campaign - Wofford refused to take the low road. His opponent Rick the Prick Santorum had no problem wallowing in slime in order to win. After his role in the Terri Schiavo medical case in Florida, Rick was replaced at the next election by Robert Casey, Jr. former Auditor General and son of the former Governor by the same name.

[MrMiniver]

I have no doubt that Wofford may be in love. The other guy? Who was 25 when they started dating but was under 20 when they met and the Sen was still married? Yeah. Okay. I think we can all add up 2 and 2 and get 4.

 

Wofford always came across as very effeminate but I just chalked it up to ... nothing. Now, it's obvious, he was gay all along and it took his wife dying to act on it.

 

The story gets more disgusting the more you look into it. Wrong side of the bed? I don't think so. I had a boyfriend who was 20 years younger for a long time but 50 years younger?Well, just about every thinking human thought was gross when Anna Nicole Smith married that guy who was 50 years old than she was. Same here. No difference.

[MrMiniver]

Wow - Worked for him as a staffer when he was in the Senate and on his re-election campaign. Never a clue - He really did love his wife - it was obvious, he lit up when she came into the room.

 

BTW - Wofford lost a very tight and very nasty campaign - Wofford refused to take the low road. His opponent Rick the Prick Santorum had no problem wallowing in slime in order to win. After his role in the Terri Schiavo medical case in Florida, Rick was replaced at the next election by Robert Casey, Jr. former Auditor General and son of the former Governor by the same name.

 

Wofford left Senate in 1995, so this guy was 19 when they first met and he was 69? Ahem. Wofford is just a typical disgusting politician. No different than Santorum.

[+ Travis69]

This thread was nice and uplifting for a while.

[+ stevenkesslar]

Wofford left Senate in 1995, so this guy was 19 when they first met and he was 69? Ahem. Wofford is just a typical disgusting politician. No different than Santorum.

We were both about to turn 70 when she died. I assumed that I was too old to seek or expect another romance. But five years later, standing on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., I sensed a creative hour and did not want to miss it.

Did you read the article? If not, the paragraph above is directly cut and pasted from it.

 

Sounds like Wofford met his husband 5 years AFTER his wife died while vacationing in Florida. Sounds like a member of this forum was simply confirming that when he (not Wofford's husband) worked for Wofford, Wofford was in love with his wife, as Wofford claims. Santorum is no doubt also a dedicated family man, but his idea of "love" is to bring their dead baby home after a tragic miscarraige so the kids can meet their dead sibling.

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/03/rick-santorum-s-dead-baby-ritual0.html

 

Both men obviously coped with tragic losses in different ways, but I'd hardly call Wofford disgusting or even typical. He sounds like a devoted husband, then and now.

[+ bashful]

A few months ago, I saw an article in my AARP magazine regarding how some senior's sexual preferences change later in life. Just something I was reading on the can, but this made me think I should have read more.

[Bearofdistinction]

And happily married to his Wife at the time to which you refer.

Much of Wofford's career was dedicated to public service and promotion, thereof:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris_Wofford

[+ WilliamM]

 

I wanted to know more about Harris Wofford and civil rights.

 

Here is a very long and excellent discussion on The Presidency and Civil Rights -- Kennedy and Johnson

 

I can not remember a video as interesting in a very long time, if only because Wofford was a senator from Pennsylvania for only four years. I never really understood his background.

 

I also feel ashamed that I did very little for civil rights in the 1960s, except vote for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and encourage everyone else to vote for LBJ. Perhaps I can count all the Joan Baez and Bob Dylan concerts I attend as well. Also a wonderful African American singer who has been lost in the history of civil rights: Jackie Washington.

 

The panel includes Harris Wofford and three African-Americans: Roger Wilkens, Charlyne Hunter-Gault and Kenneth Mack.

 

My take away, Wofford's heart is pure and fine, but it's a bureaucrat's passion.

[+ WilliamM]

Wofford is just a typical disgusting politician. No different than Santorum.

 

I have lived in Pennsylvania for years, including Wofford's and Santorum's terms in the Senate. Your comments about Harris Wofford, throughout this thread, are laughable and sad -- mostly sad.

[+ stevenkesslar]

One of the many reasons I like Alan Simpson (sorry, Kenny, look away):

 

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/alan-simpson-the-gop-wont-have-a-prayer-with-homophobic-rick-santorum/

 

To quote:

 

“I am convinced that if you get into these social issues and just stay in there about abortion and homosexuality and even mental health they bring up, somehow they’re going to take us all to Alaska and float us out in the Bering Sea or something. Here’s a party that believes in getting government out of your life, the precious right of privacy, and the right to be left alone. How then can they be in the hypocrisy of fiddling around with these social issues? We won’t have a prayer.”

 

In a long oral history on the Clinton Presidency for the Miller Center, that unfortunately I can't get anymore online, Simpson talked about bipartisanship and how at the end of the day he could respect and get along with most of his fellow Senators. He named a few exceptions. Santorum was one, who he saw as a smug, moralizing SOB. At one point Santorum came to Simpson's office to preach to him about abortion, and Simpson kicked him out.

[Kenny]

I thought his op-ed in the Times was lovely until I googled and found out that the boyfriend was 25 when they met and he was 75. I mean c'mon. Give me a fucking break.

I asked a lawyer friend "what's the point of getting married at 90?" His response:

 

Estate taxes. Exactly.

You are such a sweet man. And not bitter. :mad:

[Cooper]

Moderator's Note:

 

I'm dealing with a legitimate alert asking that this thread be moved to the Politics Forum. I don't think the original intent by the author was to make this about politics. Try to stay on topic: " Former Senator Falls in Love".

 

Coop

[tyro]

Love is love. I'll be damned how it works.

It seems to be working pretty well for these two gents. I hope there's no exploitation or craziness behind the scenes, but if there is, it's not any of my business. I just see a pic of two happy, smiley guys and am reminded that there are such things as faith, hope, and love -- and that the greatest of these is love.

This post might be a mite sappy for our token salty broad, but it just screamed to be written.

T