Martin "Marty" Lynn Anderson Jr

Marty Anderson’s life made a sharp and most delightful turn when he was reunited with the girl he’d taken to his high school senior prom 50 years earlier.

Marty and Ann Sterns had not seen one another nor communicated since that first date in 1952. Marty was 16 and Ann 17 the night of the dance at Thomas Carr Howe High School in Indianapolis. He was too shy to follow up and at that time girls did not call boys for a date. She went on to Butler University, earning a degree in education, and he went to Indiana University to study journalism. Ann married in 1957 and raised two children. Her first husband died in 2000 and wound up in St. Louis.

Anderson spent 33 years with The Associated Press in Indy, both as a reporter and editor, before retiring in 1992. He also was sole care provider for his mother after his father died in 1983 until his mother, who was blind, died in 2002.

Marty and Ann, both single, signed up for their high school 50th reunion in 2002. Marty worked with the planning committee for the reunion and noted a registration form from Ann indicating she was single. “I remember her. She’s the girl I took to the senior prom. I’ll have to look her up at the reunion,” he told the planning committee chairman.

Meanwhile Ann e-mailed the chairman whether any bachelors were coming to the reunion. The response was, “Martin Anderson inquired about you. Do you remember him?”

They met and this time the vibes were absolutely in tune. They were married in 2003. Sadly, Ann died very suddenly in 2006. After the wedding Ann had taken up something she wanted to do all her life – write short stories, mostly fiction. She joined a writers group in Avon, Indiana. After she died, Marty joined the group to perpetuate her memory by finishing stories she had started. Several of those stories have appeared in the Avon Writers Group’s literary magazine, Derivatives of Finn.

Meanwhile Marty was encouraged to resume writing, but this time he chose fiction over news reports. He too has completed stories for the group’s magazine.

Marty has lived all this life in the Indianapolis area. After college he spent time in the Army as a reserve officer with the U.S. Armor School at Fort Knox, Kentucky. In the more than three decades with the AP he covered such news events as a coliseum explosion that killed scores, a half dozen plane crashes, including one in which a jetliner with 200 people aboard collided in the air with a small plane and both plummeted into a housing development. There were many trials, including the one for boxer Mike Tyson.

Marty actually likes to write both fiction and non-fiction. He currently is working on a wrap-up of a ‘round the world trip he took in November 2008. He considered a long time before deciding on the 25-day trip that covered nine countries and 30,000 air miles. This was a trip he and Ann were preparing to take. Should he go alone? Wouldn’t he be dining alone or seated alone if he couldn’t fit in with the 73 other tourists aboard the private jet commissioned for the tour? Quit worrying and chance it, he finally decided. As it turned out he had a terrific time, always finding someone to dine with or be seated with.

He trekked through Machu Picchu, climbing then descending, always stepping high over stone steps or walls. He was dwarfed beside one of the great heads on Easter Island and marveled at the pristine whiteness of the Taj Mahal. Then on the Serengeti Plain in Africa there were lions, elephants, giraffes, hippos, leopards and the most amazing sight of all – the migrating heard of wildebeest and zebras. As he sat in a land rover, lines of the two animals stretched as far as the eye could see to the left and right.

Yes, Ann would have loved this trip. But they had many others in their few years together. Christmases with son Jim and wife Judy in Phoenix and with daughter Kira, husband Jim and grandchildren Matt and Tamera in Elgin, Illinois.

Then came a cruise through the Panama Canal. Another to Alaska past magnificent glaciers and mountains of snow and ice. In the Mediterranean to watch a total eclipse of the sun during a tour of Rome, Cairo, Alexanderia, and Rhodes. Through both the eastern and western Caribbean. To Hawaii on their honeymoon. And a land journey to China where Ann marveled at being able to talk on the Great Wall.

Marty is the son of the late Martin Sr. and Lucille Anderson. His father’s parents emigrated to the United States from Sweden early in the 20th Century. His mother’s grandfather fought for the North in the Civil War.

Marty lives alone now in Hoosier Village Retirement Center, having moved there in 2011. Faithful companion in Ricky, the cat, a rescue chosen at a pet store.