Author Gloria Bursey is a good example of romance after 50. A widow, she followed her own advice and early in 2004 she met a wonderful man on the internet, one of the numerous ways to find romance she suggests in her book.
She has had a lifelong interest in the roles of men and women in our world today. After graduating from Lindenwood College for Women in St. Charles, MO (now Lindenwood University) with a major in journalism and broadcasting, she married Roger Slykhouse and lived for almost a year in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia where he was an engineer with ARAMCO. This experience gave her a glimpse of another culture and its rules governing the behavior between the sexes. When they returned to the United States it was at the beginning of the Women's Lib movement, which involved expanding the lives of American women into the work force, in stark contrast to lives of Arabian women who had few rights outside the home.
Settling in Grand Rapids, Roger and Gloria became proud parents of three children. In the 1970s after much thought about the different cultures in which she had lived, she published a magazine called GLORY for several years, which explored the relationships between men and women, and how working outside the home influences love and marriage. During this time she and writer Ruthe Miller researched happiness in marriage through numerous interviews and a scientifically designed study to discover the predictors of marital happiness. The results became a series of articles which sparked much interest among her readers and which is included in the second half of her book, 50 Ways to Find Romance after 50.
During this same time she published her father Antarctic Explorer Jack Bursey's book, St. Lunaire, about his lead dog on Admiral Byrd's first expedition 1928-29. Bursey's own adventures on three Antarctic expeditions are in his book Antarctic Night published by Rand McNally. He and two other men made the longest dog team trip on that frosty continent claiming land for the United States. He later lectured around the States on these travels with his 16 millimeter movies which captured many scenes not recorded by any other photographer.
Another strong influence in the author's life was her mother, Ada, who flew airplanes in the 1920s and explored the Black Hills in her Model T. She was an early feminist, working outside the home for the State of Michigan, also an avid gardener, and a fabulous cook. She had a great curiosity about nature and a compassion for people. People would come to visit Gloria's father and return to see her mother.
The author's parents met at the World's Fair in Chicago. Her father was a tour guide aboard the ship The City of New York in which he and the other explorers had sailed on the first Antarctic Expedition in 1929. Her mother took the tour and they fell in love. Their meeting illustrates how fate can take a hand and another way to find romance.
If you're wondering how Gloria met her husband Roger, it was through her love of horses. She began riding at the age of eight. When she was barely a teenager, she accompanied her father on one of his lectures to a group of young equestrians. There she met John Slykhouse, Roger's father, and his sister Lynda who invited her to a trail ride at their house. She eagerly accepted and met Roger, a college student. After she earned her B.A. she worked for two years at KETC-TV in St. Louis where she had her own interview show. Ten years later, she and Roger were married. Meeting someone with a common interest is another way to find romance!
In the early 1980s both Gloria's husband and her father died. While she continued her career in writing and photography, free-lancing for several local newspapers and magazines, she began thinking about the changing roles of people over 50. In 1987 she launched CHOICES For the Rest of Your Life, a magazine with approximately 40,000 readers, many who often asked her about romance in later life. During this same time she traveled extensively and also produced a publication for a large timeshare in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
After publishing CHOICES for 10 years, she sold it and started interviewing couples for her book on romance in later life. She also began developing a photo history of "12 Outstanding Women" in the West Michigan area sponsored by the Women's History Council with the help of her computer literate son, Rusty (Roger Jr.). The exhibit opened a year later at the Gerald R. Ford Museum, and now hangs at the Women's Resource Center of which she was one of several founders.
After 23 years of being a widow, she met artist Harry Borgman on Yahoo Personals while she was researching different internet dating services to update the fastest growing trend in finding romance for her many radio interviews and talks to various groups. He was holding one of his cats in his photo and they clicked as Gloria is another cat lover. (It helps a romance if both people like pets.) In her book Gloria suggests that couples in a romance not live over 60 miles apart for practical reasons. She and Harry travel 100 miles apart, a drive which has become rather long and tedious. He has a beautiful home based on Frank Lloyd Wright designs and she lives in a 100 year old Victorian. They haven't figured out a way to merge households and may have to find a different home for the two of them. How to do this is a possibility for another book.
Harry's paintings can be seen on his website www.harryborgman.com, and at the Craig Smith Gallery in Harbert, MI. He has received over 60,000 hits on his blog: harryborgmanart.blogspot.com. Gloria also blogs at: findingromanceafter50.blogspot.com and theromancegame.blogspot.com. Her photos of Mexico and many other subjects are displayed at the Scarlet Macaw Gallery in Sawyer, MI. She is planning to develop a TV production based on her father's Antarctic movies.