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Hidden HeartacheDAY FIVE
By Staff Writer COLLINS CONNER
In Milton Howe's wallet, next to his Social Security card, was his favorite snapshot of Linda, sitting sassy, with her legs crossed. He'd carried it for 22 years and showed it to everybody.
For 22 years, Milt carried this photo of Linda in his wallet.
Four weeks after Milt died, Linda cleaned out his wallet and pulled out her picture. Behind it, she found another photo. Of another woman with her legs crossed. The woman was Sandy Schmidt, a friend of theirs from Wisconsin, where Linda and Milt lived until 1993. Sandy was 10 years younger than Linda, red-haired and exuberant. Nothing tickled Sandy more than leading some wild escapade or pulling a practical joke. At parties, Milt would dare her to drink disgusting, potent brews, and she always took the dare. Sandy and her husband Ralph dreamed up the water slide relay race at River Bend Resort and started a Green Bay Packers fan club with crazy rules and penalties and black-tie awards banquets. The whole time Linda and Milt owned a campsite at River Bend, Linda watched the way her husband looked at Sandy. She saw delight in his eyes, and a glimmer of desire.
When Linda got breast cancer, Sandy seemed an even greater threat. "She has a total and complete chest," Linda thought.
After he died, behind the photo of herself, Linda found this snapshot of In part to shake off her jealousy, Linda decided to have her breast reconstructed, but the surgery created an awful mess. The incision wouldn't heal. Infection set in. It took three more surgeries and radical therapy to fix the damage. By the time Linda recuperated, Milt's lung cancer had been diagnosed. All of those hard memories came back the day Linda found Sandy's picture. She turned the photo over. Milt had scrawled two phone numbers on the back -- Sandy's work number and home number. "I always thought I was the only one he had a picture of like that, and now I see her," she said. She put Milt's Social Security card and her photo, not Sandy's, into a safe deposit box. "I was a part of him," she said. "But I'm not putting her in there." She told herself the secret snapshot meant nothing. "He insisted they were only good friends, and I guess that's it," she thought. "I'm so naive, but I can't imagine them doing very much of anything. He'd give her a kiss on the lips goodbye in front of me, but that never bothered me either." She looked again at the picture.
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