Charles Meets Iris

About 1980

Charles Meets Iris

I had attended Jacksonville University and had been giving Scott Wolf a ride to JU in Arlington from time-to-time.  Scott previously attended Vanderbilt but came home to Jacksonville as a result of his need for dialysis.  His sister, Stacy, suggested that I take Scott with me when I went out on weekends as a single.  My father had died in 1978 and I was living alone in a three bedroom/one bathroom home that my father had bought in south Jacksonville near St. Nicholas.

Scott called one night to suggest we attend a Jacksonville Jewish Singles party on a Saturday in an apartment community house.  I agreed to attend but knew that I wouldn’t care for the crowd.   Scott introduced me to a friend of his, Iris Goodstein, who was running the singles program for the Federation with Ruth Slutzah.  Iris had previously worked for Jewish Family and Children’s Services but was passed over when the director, Larry Rackow, retired.

One day Stacey Epstein called me to see if I wanted to take out a friend of hers, Betsy Rubin.  I called Betsy who told me she lived in a new apartment way out in Mandarin.  When I arrived, Iris answered the door.

When I asked her what she was doing there, she replied that she had separated from her husband Bob Goodstein, a young attorney.

Betsy and I went to the Orange Park Mall movie to see Robert Redfern in a prison movie called “Brubaker.”  It was uneventful as Betsy wanted to go bar hopping and I didn’t.

Mary Wolf invited me to a Thanksgiving dinner.  It was at Stacey’s house on Smullian Trail.  There was a large crowd: married and singles.   Iris was there.  I left early and didn’t schmooze because I had another date.

Mary called a month later and insisted that I call Iris to ask her out.   At this time, my relatives were aggressively serving as my personal matchmaker.  They had determined that I was not gay and could not understand why I was living alone in a house by myself.

I called Iris to ask her to join me for lunch at the downtown Sears Roebuck restaurant.  It had an upscale restaurant called the “Jean Ribault Room”.   <b>Sears patrons dined on one of the specialties of the Jean Ribault Room, shrimp salad served in an abalone pearl shell.  This in-store restaurant, clad in cool, calming greens, was situated on the second floor.  It indicated its First Coast location through a 33-foot long mural by Jax artist Lee Adams.  The painting depicted the 1562 landing of Frenchman Jean Ribault at the mouth of the St. Johns River.  Appropriately, coffee was served to diners by two girls in 16th Century French costumes.  Patrons could also frequent the building's Peggy Kellogg coffee shop.  As one website visitor notes about this eatery, "I remember going in as a child and my parents would get me a chocolate milk drink."<b>

Standing at the corner of Bay & Pearl was a mammoth Sears automotive center, which serviced thirty vehicles at a time.  Furthermore, customers could take advantage of a copious garden center.  This was connected to the main structure by a covered walkway and a bridge over a reflecting pool.  All in all, the entire Sears complex was staffed by over 1,100 employees.   The complex had replaced a hodgepodge of old buildings.  These included a bus station, a meat business, a produce company, several warehouses, and some railroad offices.  However, Sears eventually closed its Northbank shopping utopia.  It followed other downtown department stores by relocating to outlying neighborhoods.  The company shuttered its Northbank outlet in 1981 so as to reopen in a new expansion at the Regency Mall.  Courtesy of MetroJax.org     

“She’s so beautiful” Mary crooned to me over the phone.  “When are you going out with her again?”  I invited Iris to have dinner with me on a Wednesday night as a follow-up.   “Why would you ask me to go out with you on a date on a Wednesday night?” she would ask me many years later after we were married.

For years she was convinced that I didn’t want to invest a lot of money in dating her.  She also claimed that I excused myself from the date by saying I had to get up early so terminated the date quickly.

It was because Iris told me she was leaving town to see her sick mother.  She might not be able to see me since she travelled to Fort Lauderdale on the weekends dutifully.  During Teri’s sickness, Iris struggled to leave town on Friday and drive back to Jacksonville on Sunday night.  This was an eight hour ride one way.

After her mother passed away, she got in touch with me.  We started hanging out together.  Her roommate Betsy left for graduate school.  Iris bought a single family home in Huntington Forest from a friend who was a Marine and was being transferred.  After we married, this was the first home we lived in.