This friend was with me during high school drill team practices in the late 1970’s; gathered with me and my sorority sisters in the Chi Omega Suite at ASU during the early 1980’s; moved with me to Dallas in 1984 as my friends and I began our careers; followed me back to Arkansas when I married Stewart on October 18, 1986; stayed by my side as the 1990’s became a blur once we had our two daughters; and was my constant companion as I fought cancer in 2000 and 2001.
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| Michael E. Knight, Tad Martin on AMC, autographed this Dec 1989 copy of Soap Opera Digest magazine |
Who is this friend? The soap opera – All My Children. And when I first heard the news on my car radio last April that AMC was being cancelled by the ABC Network, I cried. Well, I was also returning home from the dentist after having dental work done, and there might have been some pain medication involved, but I still cried.
Memories of popular AMC characters and story lines came flooding back to me: Cliff and Nina dating despite the objections from her strict father Palmer Cortlandt; the very popular teen couples Greg & Jenny and Jesse & Angie in the 1980’s; former bad boy Tad and sweet Dixie; Janet pushing her twin sister Natalie into a well so she could have Trevor to herself; good-looking DA Jackson Montgomery, and of course, Erica Kane.
In the era before the Internet, watching soap operas was a community affair. I also loved when actors from these soap operas would come to Little Rock as part of KATV Channel 7 events. I met Michael E. Knight, who played Tad Martin, at Wild River Country in North Little Rock. I saw John Callahan, who played Edmund Grey, at Burns Park. And I met James Kiberd, who portrayed popular police detective Trevor Dillon, at the “Food 4 Less Store” in Jacksonville!
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| For the 10th Anniversary issue of Soap Opera Weekly magazine, November 23, 1999, I submitted a letter to the Editor telling how I won $100 in a “Who Killed Will” contest and it was published in the magazine! |
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