Bill and Yoshiko Moore Bill Moore, at 78, is mischievous and irreverent and apparently – if his stories are to be believed – has always been so. A skilled raconteur, he laughs a lot as he spins his tales while, quietly smiling next to him, his wife Yoshiko looks on skeptically and can sometimes be caught rolling her eyes. He was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on Aug. 4, 1935 into a family that had lived there for several generations. He loved growing up in Jacksonville and described the city during the World War II years as an exciting place where he and his friends scavenged for any type of metal they could find and turn in to help the war effort. His grandmother did her part, he said, by converting her home so she had five bedrooms to rent to families who had converged on the area to work in the bustling shipyards. “During those war years, the top half of car headlights were blacked out and there was blackout on Jacksonville Beach every night. We had to use blackout curtains in our homes so no lights would show through. We were wary of German submarines, but I don’t remember being really afraid until after the war ended and the Cold War started. Then, we were afraid of nuclear missiles,” Bill said. At 22 he joined the Air Force after going “in and out of a few colleges. I did not graduate with a degree from any one. My major was Chasing Girls,” he noted gleefully. His Air Force career started out in West Palm Beach and over the years he served in South Carolina, Saudi Arabia, Louisiana, Germany, and Okinawa, Japan. He worked in the supplies division but later became a recruiter, for more than seven years, before returning to supplies. “The highlight of my career was Recruiting,” he said. “To be a hero in Recruiting you had to recruit women and recruiting a nurse gave you the greatest number of points.” In December 1957 he married for the first time – ironically, to a nurse – and they had two daughters, Melinda and Paige, before they divorced in 1971. In Okinawa in 1977, and two months shy of returning to the United States, he walked into an art gallery and met Yoshiko who was working there as a clerk. Despite her limited English (that led her to tell him, on their first double-date, that since she had used all her English telling him her name and age, there was no point in continuing to see each other) they dated for the remainder of his stay. Two years later, she came to the States to visit relatives and had one of her nieces write him a letter. “It was in late September 1979 and I got that letter and drove from Tavares, Florida, to Nebraska to see her. I was wearing tennis shorts when I got there and people looked at me like a crazy person.” Bill and Yoshiko were married on May 16, 1980 and his mother, Helen, was overjoyed to have a new daughter-in-law. “I was the oldest of three boys and my mother had always wanted a girl to raise. So here she was with a 32-year-old daughter who needed guidance on the customs of this new country and the language. My mother was a blessing to us both. I think Yoshiko loved my mother more than me,” he said with a big grin. “You talk too much,” Yoshiko finally chimed in. Bill went to work in the Orange County school system as an administrator in auxiliary services and remained there for 13 years. When he retired from the school system he began teaching computer classes at the Marks Street Senior Center. One day, Yoshiko – who was in another room learning to type – heard music emanating from a nearby class on Ballroom dancing. She went to observe the class and fell in love with the dance form. “She persevered and got really good at it and even became assistant to the instructor,” Bill said. “I would go and take pictures of her dancing and put them on my web site. Then some friends got us into Square Dancing and we have traveled all over dancing. We’ve stayed at 17 elder hostels and, in Tokyo a few years ago, we were dancing with 27 square dance clubs. The largest club would attract 350 dancers each week.” Yoshiko still dances three mornings each week at the Beardall Senior Center, and they also participate in the LIFE (Learning Institute For Elders) program at the University of Central Florida. Bill had a triple heart bypass in 2007 and has had to slow down. They considered moving into another senior living community, but came to The Fountains at Orlando Lutheran Towers to visit some friends and realized there was a bunch of people from their square dance club who lived there. “Within four weeks we had signed a contract on our apartment and we moved in 2010,” Bill said. Then, with a big grin at Yoshiko, he remarked that it had been a very spacious apartment when they first moved in. “But we kept our house for seven months after we moved here, and every time she went over she would come back with something. We downsized from a house but most of the stuff ended up here with us.” Yoshiko rolled her eyes and smiled. ##
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 19:29:42 +0000
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