From the heart of Bill Whittaker
My wife, Helen, and Fred Astaire went way back. At least, it seemed that way to me. It started in the 1960s, when Helen moved from Connecticut to Chicago to take a job as a dance instructor at the Fred Astaire Dance Studio in the Loop district.
Some twenty years later, Helen and I were in Paris when Fred Astaire died. We got the news on television – French television. Our language challenge was broken when a Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movie was broadcast in tribute to the deceased dancer.
Now, nearly 20 years after Fred Astaire's death, Helen was dead, too. She had been totally bedridden for the last four years of her life. During that time, we watched a lot of television, a lot of movies. We watched Rogers and Astaire musicals whenever they were broadcast. We liked those movies. They always made us feel good.
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