A PERFORMANCE BY JUSTIN HAYWARD, the last surviving member of the Moody Blues, helped Cindy and Paul Sawyer celebrate their “first date anniversary” at the ARCADA Theatre. (Photo submitted)
Versailles artist Steve Sawyer and his wife Cindy celebrated their “first date anniversary,” when they drove to St. Charles, Illinois, to see Justin Hayward, the last surviving member of the Moody Blues.
The couple saw Hayward perform with his band on Sept. 20 – nearly 53 years after their first date on Nov. 1, 1973, to see the original Moody Blues play at Freedom Hall in Louisville.
“I can’t even remember the concert really,” says Cindy, with Steve adding, “I don’t either. I remember you.”
Their first date almost never happened “because we couldn’t find each other,” says Cindy, after their paths briefly crossed one summer when she was 15.
When Steve finally found Cindy, he credits a good friend for giving him two tickets to the Moody Blues concert for their first date. Steve has lost contact with that friend, so he has never been able to tell him “the full impact of his gift.”
From the time Steve and Cindy briefly met at Kentucky Dam Village, they knew this was who they’d marry. So Steve says, “It was clearly life-altering.”
Cindy lived in Louisville and Steve, a University of Kentucky student, was a lifeguard at Kentucky Dam Village when their paths crossed one summer. She was anxious and upset that her parents were stopping at the state park instead of driving to Florida.
Cindy’s dad told her to take a look at the Kentucky Dam pool from their balcony. When she did, she saw Steve and told her dad she wanted to stay.
It wasn’t until her family’s last day at Kentucky Dam Village when Cindy finally spoke to Steve. He started playing piano for her before singing “Color My World” to her – “and it was like smitten time,” she remembers.
Her family returned the following summer, but Steve wasn’t working. A chance encounter with another lifeguard, also a student at UK, led to Steve and Cindy finally finding each other, she says.
“So it was one phone call. One date, and we were engaged just a few months later,” she says. They married on June 15, 1974. She was 18, and he was 21.
“We walked through the looking glass into each other’s lives, I guess,” says Steve, while reflecting on their chance meeting, first date and a life spent together.
They now have five children and six grandchildren, and Cindy has never stopped appreciating Steve’s creativity.