Sue Dunham and Curtis Dunham

[00:02] SUE DUNHAM: Good morning. My name is Sue Dunham. I'm 83 years old, and today is March 11, 2024, and I'm located in Fort Myers, Florida. I'm here with my partner, my husband, Kurt.

[00:20] KURT DUNHAM: Hi, I'm Kurt Dunham. I am 83 and three quarter years old, and the date and the place are the same because we're in the same room. Okay. I think we should tell the people about who we are. And our life started when I met sue, and her life started when she met me. But I can only tell you my half of the story because I wasn't in her head at the time. I am an electrical engineer. I was on a training assignment. One of the other fellows, Washington, was on the same assignment, and he met Sue's roommate before I got there and said, when I got there, would you like to go on a double date? I said, sure. So we went over, and we saw the two young women come down the stairs, and the first one went right over to my friend and said, hi. So I realized she was his date, and I realized that, oh, I got the pretty one. And it was just pretty to me. The other woman was very attractive. But sue hit all the buttons that I was looking for, and that started off a thing. We began to see each other every day after that. You can say what you were doing at the time.

[01:36] SUE DUNHAM: Well, we were in corning, New York, and I was studying to be a teacher, and that was my first assignment as a student teacher, and I guess I'd been there about two weeks at that point. So.

[01:53] KURT DUNHAM: Dating all kinds of people?

[01:54] SUE DUNHAM: No, not dating anybody at all. So this was a very welcome time for me, and we had a lot of good times there. Corning was a particularly good town for us. Good little city. We discovered we both like art movies, and we both like to go to the corning factory and bowl and start shopping for things. And it was fun.

[02:29] KURT DUNHAM: Yes. Anyway, we continued on until I had to go to a different training assignment, and then I had to figure out what to do with sue. So I was wearing a ring. I made a silver ring. My mother was into jewelry, and I managed to get a silver ring out of it, and I asked her if she would hold that for me because I had to go away to another assignment. And she said, yes. But that was the hardest thing, one of the hardest things I ever had to do, because it could have gone the other way, and I would have been totally disappointed, but it didn't. And I had this feeling that it would be that way. And, in fact. So I continued to see her every weekend. I would drive up from Baltimore to wherever she was teaching. It still was corning for a while. And then it shifted to owe. Owego? Yeah, a little farther west in New York. But I had to teach her how to drive a stick shift in case I got really tired of. And I had a volkswagen. So we were driving along and she was doing the practicing and she picked it up right away. And then she was concerned about what phys ed course she had to take next semester. So she ran down the list and said, what should I pick? And I said, take skiing. And she said, why? Well, as a little aside, I'm from New Hampshire and I skied every weekend in the wintertime. So I said, she should take skiing. And she said, why? And I said, because if you don't, you'll be left home alone when the kids and I go skiing. And she said, did you hear what you just said? Is that all right? And I looked over at her and she had this quirky little grin and said, yes, it was all right.

[04:15] SUE DUNHAM: I knew we were in yes, it was all right. I it was very good, in fact. So after that, we did get married. And we've been married now for 62 years. So 62 adventuresome years. We've had a lot of adventures.

[04:39] KURT DUNHAM: One of the best things was our kids, though we had two sons, they were both very smart, and they showed it in different ways. Christopher used to when he was two and younger, he would practice saying words in his bedroom when he didn't think we could hear, which I thought kind of unusual. I've been around kids and I never knew anyone that did that. They just learned it and tried it in public. But he was concerned that he did things right. So I could hear him practicing the words. And we were driving along one time and he said, which word did he say first? Bus or truck?

[05:20] SUE DUNHAM: Bus.

[05:22] KURT DUNHAM: Now he said mommy and daddy, but no other words in public. So when he went by a bus, he would say bus. We said, oh, bus. And he would say it as if we were teaching him. And then one day we went by a truck and I thought he would say bus. But he said, truck. I bus. He didn't want us to know he knew the word truck yet. Very funny. Jason, on the other hand, didn't talk until he was three because he learned to teach us that eh meant I want something different. And mostly sue, because she was home with him and I was at work, she would respond and get it correctly. And so he had no need to talk. All her needs were being taken care of.

[06:06] SUE DUNHAM: Actually, I thought he could be deaf. And when I took him to the pediatrician, he said, oh, no, he's not deaf. And I want to. Why do you know that he doesn't talk? I said, well, if he doesn't talk by the time he's three, and he wasn't quite three yet, I said, then I'm going to insist on a hearing test. Well, he started talking, and then he started watching Sesame street. And by the time he was four, he was reading at a fifth grade level. He had taught himself all the words. And at five, he went into school. I was teaching at a fifth grade class, and he went into the class with me before school started. He was sitting there occupying himself, reading the science book out loud. And the principal came in, and he said, he's reading that? And I said, yes. He said, and he understands it. I said, yes. He said, can he transfer to this school? I said, no. But both boys became very successful. Both went to college. Was very good for us.

[07:22] KURT DUNHAM: Before they got to college, there was one little side thing. Jason. When Jason was in second grade, his teacher recognized he might be bored if he was just doing the second grade work. So she set up an office in a cloakroom they weren't using, and he would go do his advanced work there. And then he would come out and do the second grade work, because Jason didn't want to be left behind. He didn't want to miss things. He did both of them. It was pretty nice. At that point, we built our dream house. We found four acres of land in the rural dairy country in New Jersey and built our dream house. And that was good for, like, eight years. And then sue felt something was missing. And we tried all kinds of things, counseling and all. But she. She's a take charge person, and the answer was, get the divorce. See what happens. And so we ended up divorced. For two years, I tried to find a partner, and I just kept comparing him to sue. Nobody can compare. So I finally gave up on that and figured my job is just to make sure that the rest of her life goes okay, no matter who she's with. But in the meantime, we had to find places to live because we sold our dream house. Sue bought a house in town, and I figured if I got a small house, I could get a bigger boat. I had a little dinghy at the time, and pretty soon, the boat got big enough to live on, and I didn't bother with the house. This will lead to something else that happened later on.

[08:58] SUE DUNHAM: The boys were in high school. At that point, well, actually, we did get back together, and I didn't like the boat that Kurt bought.

[09:10] KURT DUNHAM: It was a little cramped.

[09:12] SUE DUNHAM: It was very cramped. But I was interested in learning about boating because I'd grown up on the water, but I never really boated when I was a kid. Never had the opportunity. Anyway, we decided we would start going to the Annapolis sailboat show to look at other boats, and that's what we did.

[09:37] KURT DUNHAM: Sue actually had the bright. She always has all the bright ideas. She knew I'm constantly reading sailing magazines, and she knew what I liked. She said, why don't we rent a boat down in the Chesapeake for a week and see what it's like, which we did. I think you found it, right? You found the rental person.

[09:56] SUE DUNHAM: Yes. It was a catamaran. Because catamarans were the kind of boat that you liked, and I certainly felt more comfortable in them because they're very stable.

[10:06] KURT DUNHAM: Exactly. And there's plenty of room inside them as opposed to a narrow boat.

[10:11] SUE DUNHAM: Yes.

[10:12] KURT DUNHAM: So we rented one week and really enjoyed it. Rented one again the next year and really enjoyed it. Same rental thing. And sue decided, let's buy a boat. Why don't we buy one instead of renting it all the time? Now, when you buy a boat, it comes with all kinds of other costs. So sometimes for most people, for many people, renting is the answer. But what did we do to solve the cost problem, sue?

[10:41] SUE DUNHAM: Well, I said, you should get a coast guard license so that we could take people on chartering. If we chartered a boat for other people, if we had cruises, they would pay us basically to keep the boat and all the expenses that we had. We determined that the best place to do that would be New York harbor, which is near where we lived, which definitely was about 45 minutes from where we were, so it was easily accessible. We found a marina. We got a slip there, and then we started advertising. Because you were a successful captain at that point. The people who came, they were limited to six people, which was just fine. We provided dinner cruises, which was also kind of fun, an adventure. I worked up a menu of five different options for people. Anyway, people came, and they ended up paying for the slip, paying for the food, paying our traveling expenses, and even buying the special clothes we wore to say we were the crew. We did this for eight years, eight wonderful years getting out into the harbor. We were lucky to see fireworks many times because we had no idea at that point that besides the 4 July in New York harbor, people can contract with fireworks companies and celebrate a birthday.

[12:30] KURT DUNHAM: Rich people do this?

[12:31] SUE DUNHAM: Yeah. Well, yes.

[12:32] KURT DUNHAM: A lot of money. Tens of thousands of dollars they'll spend on their birthday. Surprise.

[12:37] SUE DUNHAM: That's right. But it was a surprise to us, too, because the coast guard would announce about an hour or two before they'd.

[12:42] KURT DUNHAM: Announce a safety zone. And we knew that meant fireworks. So we would then say, oh, by the way, we've arranged for a little show at the end, so we're going to be a little later getting in. You're going to see some fireworks. They thought it was for them, and we didn't disabuse them of that thought. I think maybe sometimes we told them who it was. We would have to know. The coast guard never said who was setting it up, but, yeah, we always knew when there was going to be fireworks.

[13:09] SUE DUNHAM: It was great fun. We had a lot of wonderful memories doing that.

[13:14] KURT DUNHAM: It brought about a reversal of roles for us. Sue is in the teaching business, and her business is people. And I was an engineer. My business was things, but I had actually done well enough that I had to begin talking to people about what I did. So I get used to that kind of thing. I had some really good bosses that made it easy to transition into speaking in public. As an engineer, you don't want to do that. So on the cruise, sue would disappear down inside, and she would make five dinners, four or five separate dinners for the six people on a two burner stove. Amazing, amazing technology she put to use. And she put her headphones on, and she'd be disconnected from the world. And I would entertain everybody outside with stories, seafaring, and what they're looking at with that building over there. Did you know that's where murder incorporated had their headquarters? Under the East river bridge.

[14:16] SUE DUNHAM: Brooklyn Bridge.

[14:18] KURT DUNHAM: The Brooklyn Bridge. It was kind of fun. It was very fun. And our friends with boats at the marina just sat there. And we would go out two and three times a week, minimum, and they never did because they'd been. But when you go out with people that have never seen it before, it's all new. It was all new to us every time. We just loved it. I particularly loved it. We would go out at 06:00. Six to ten was the best cruise. And we would sail down to the Statue of Liberty in the daylight. Then we'd turn and sail up to the east, up the east river to the Brooklyn bridge. And I would. That's about supper time. So I would slow the boat down and sue would serve supper, and then we'd come out, and now it's dark and we'd sail back to the statue of liberty all lighted up, and people. Oh, and then we would turn, and they'd see the lights of Manhattan.

[15:16] SUE DUNHAM: Oh.

[15:17] KURT DUNHAM: Oh. Every time. Very predictable, but thrilling for us.

[15:23] SUE DUNHAM: It was. It was really wonderful. And we had some very memorable people aboard, some more memorable than others for different reasons. But at any rate, then you. Then you were retiring, and we decided our aim was always to go south.

[15:46] KURT DUNHAM: Before we retired, though, something happened to us, something magical.

[15:49] SUE DUNHAM: Yes, that's. That's true.

[15:51] KURT DUNHAM: Sue decided, we're gonna. We're gonna go south, and we're gonna live south. And I thought, well, there goes skiing, but that's the way it goes.

[15:56] SUE DUNHAM: And you wanted to live either in Miami or Fort Lauderdale, in Florida, where it would be warm.

[16:03] KURT DUNHAM: Sue decided she had to learn Spanish.

[16:05] SUE DUNHAM: Yes.

[16:05] KURT DUNHAM: Because mostly people, one of us had.

[16:08] SUE DUNHAM: To over there speak Spanish. On that side.

[16:10] KURT DUNHAM: She's better with languages than I am. So what happened when you.

[16:15] SUE DUNHAM: I went to our local community college, and I ended up taking four semesters of Spanish. And the fourth semester was basically conversational and literature. And during the conversation, the spanish teacher, Cheryl, told us that she was expecting and she wanted to go back to work soon after the baby was born. And she was looking for somebody who would be bilingual so her child would learn Spanish right from the very beginning. Well, it turned out that her baby, Emily, was born in September. And I called her, and I said, I know you don't. You know how much Spanish I have. I'm not quite bilingual, but I would love to take care of a baby, your baby. And she said, oh, that's wonderful.

[17:21] KURT DUNHAM: And Cheryl had to drive right by our house to go to school anyway, so it was very convenient for her.

[17:25] SUE DUNHAM: It was absolutely convenient. So we got Emily, and Kurt said.

[17:33] KURT DUNHAM: Sue said, I think I want to take care of Emily. What do you think? And I said, well, if you do that, we're going to have her in our life forever. So far that's true. I don't see it ending anytime.

[17:46] SUE DUNHAM: She's 30. She's 30 years old.

[17:48] KURT DUNHAM: She just got a doctor, just got married, and we've been with her every.

[17:52] SUE DUNHAM: Step of the way, and it's been wonderful.

[17:56] KURT DUNHAM: Yeah. Now, sue mentioned that we were nearing retirement for me, and I was well thought of at the arsenal. That's where I worked, picatinny Arsenal, and could have gone to a different position because they were moving. My job was going to be moved to Aberdeen, Aberdeen proving ground. They thought it was. It doesn't matter why it was going to go there as was the appropriate place. So I would either shift to something or retire. And at the same time, they were having population. The work. Work. What do you call the work force? They were trying to diminish it somewhat, so they're giving early outs, shrinking government. I could either get another position in which I would have to stay several years to really do it justice, or I could take the $25,000 and retire now. And our financial advisor said, take the money.

[18:58] SUE DUNHAM: Take the money and run.

[19:00] KURT DUNHAM: Yeah. So. But we promised to keep Emily day caring until she was in first grade.

[19:06] SUE DUNHAM: Kindergarten.

[19:07] KURT DUNHAM: I thought it was first grade.

[19:08] SUE DUNHAM: Nope, kindergarten.

[19:09] KURT DUNHAM: She was. How old was she?

[19:11] SUE DUNHAM: Four.

[19:12] KURT DUNHAM: She was four. That's when I had her for a year.

[19:15] SUE DUNHAM: Oh, she was three when you were taking care of her for a year.

[19:20] KURT DUNHAM: I think the wrong number's not right, but that's all right. It was wonderful. I got. I stayed home. I said, we can't retire and go away this year. We still have to take care of Emily one more year, and it got to be me. So that freed sue up to do her. I was school board stuff.

[19:36] SUE DUNHAM: Yes. I was president of the school board at that point and needed. It was very helpful to have somebody taking care of Emily while I was trying to take care of business.

[19:46] KURT DUNHAM: And I found out that girls and boys are different. When we had our two sons, when we just had Chris, it was pretty much the same, except that I worked and sue didn't at that time. So sue got to be with him all the time. Once there were two of them, whenever I was with them, they were fine, lovely. It was great being with them, but they had each other. Emily only had me, so we didn't have any other kids in the house. So Emily and I bonded really well.

[20:14] SUE DUNHAM: You baked cookies, you did all kinds of stuff.

[20:18] KURT DUNHAM: And our boys wanted to play, and Emily would just as soon, let's cuddle, Kurt. Let's cuddle. You can't beat that kind of life.

[20:28] SUE DUNHAM: Yeah, it was a fun time, and her mother appreciated all the extra things that we did for her. She would let us take her for a weekend.

[20:39] KURT DUNHAM: Can we borrow your daughter for a weekend? She said she would have. Emily's kid friends would call up and say, can Emily come out to play? And Cheryl would have to say, I'm sorry. Emily's out on her yacht today. Emily is the only one of our children grandchildren that really loves boats. The others liked it. They would go out whenever you wanted to take them. But Emily loved it.

[21:03] SUE DUNHAM: She wanted to learn, and they just wanted to sit and enjoy the experience, which was fine, too. So when she was four, we had gone to. We had taken our sailboat, did our first trip south, and that was kind of an adventure because we'd never, never really left the New Jersey waters before, and everything was new. We bought books and what to expect and places to go and so forth.

[21:34] KURT DUNHAM: People thought we were adventurous, but we never went anywhere that a ton of people had been before and written about it. So we were confident wherever we were.

[21:43] SUE DUNHAM: Going, we didn't feel adventuresome.

[21:46] KURT DUNHAM: But, yeah, it looked adventurous from the.

[21:48] SUE DUNHAM: Outside, I guess so. And we got south, and that first winter, we found a place in Fort Myers to dock the boat for the winter. And during spring break, I went north and got Emily, and she came down and spent a week on the boat, and her mother came down and picked her up afterwards. That was a wonderful experience for her and for us at the same time. We were at Fort Myers beach at that point.

[22:22] KURT DUNHAM: And I mentioned before, our children were very bright, and Emily was very bright. One day, while we were down there during this trip, she said, kurt, tell me all about electricity, because I'm an electrical engineer, and I. Well, what do I do? I can start with the atom and the electrons, but I don't think that's what she means. Emily. Tomorrow we're going to go to the library, and we'll look up some books for it. And so we dinghyed across to where the library was.

[22:49] SUE DUNHAM: We didn't have a car. The dinghy was our car.

[22:51] KURT DUNHAM: And we found a book on the electrical power grid. And I thought, that's probably what she's interested in. And so we brought it back to the boat, and I read it to her every page. The next day, her mother arrived, and Emily, who couldn't read yet, read every page, and she didn't miss it a lick. She got everything she had memorized the book one time through. I was just totally amazed.

[23:18] SUE DUNHAM: Also on that trip, our nephew came, and we did an environmental tour with him. And we learned a lot, also about Florida. And then we started north in the spring, and we got to. We realized that our boat was comfortable, but it might be a little small for the number of years we intend to be on.

[23:39] KURT DUNHAM: I thought we could live on it forever.

[23:40] SUE DUNHAM: Yeah, but we couldn't.

[23:41] KURT DUNHAM: Then I decided ten years might be. We could. That's a maybe on the way, and we'd have to switch to a condo or something. But on the way back, we stopped.

[23:52] SUE DUNHAM: At Amelia island, and I was on the dock walking long after shopping, and I saw a boat a trawleregh. We had learned what trawlers were, and I'd seen a couple, but nothing really caught my eye until I passed this one. And I stopped to look at it. And the person who owned the boat came up behind me and said, would you like to take a look? Come aboard. I said, yes, let me go get my husband. Well, the two of us walked on board, and I said, that's it. This is the boat that I want.

[24:28] KURT DUNHAM: I had a reservation, which I mentioned to the owner, don't you have a problem when you have to go outside to get from the interior of the boat to the pilot house? They didn't have interior steering. And he said. I said, you don't have a problem in bad weather, going up the ladder and out. And he said, what are you going out in bad weather for? I said, right. I'm retired. I don't go out in bad weather. You stay at anchor, and we're good. So that kind of solidified. That was the boat we wanted.

[24:55] SUE DUNHAM: We were very lucky. We found the exact same boat. There were only 99 of them made. It was a Krogan manatee. And we found one just by luck. When we were in Atlantic City, on our way back, we met another couple who had a krogan boat a little larger. And we told them what we were looking for. And they gave us the name of somebody who was selling. And within two weeks, we had called and gone back to Annapolis, where the boat was. Ended up buying that boat. And long story short, we lived aboard for 13 years. We cruised with that boat for five years, going from New Jersey to Florida and. And back north in the spring for doctor appointments and so forth that we thought we needed to do once a year.

[25:57] KURT DUNHAM: Finally managed to. We managed. We're staying down longer. We want to get local doctors in case we get sick in the middle of the winter.

[26:06] SUE DUNHAM: But we would go north sometimes. We went up the Hudson river. We went up to Maine. We just had a wonderful time with that boat. And then after five years, I said, I think we should get jobs so that we can maintain this lifestyle forever. So we did.

[26:32] KURT DUNHAM: The Mel Fisher company and I will let you look it up, opened up a store museum on Sanibel island, which is right near Fort Myers, is where we were based because sue had an aunt and an uncle who lived there, and we were able to borrow their car. When we got jobs, we realized we had to buy a car so we could use it every day. And we went out. I worked for a temp agency at first, and they said, there's a job coming up at the mill Fisher museum for a guard. So sue said, oh, that's interesting. I could do that too. So we drove out and had the interview, and he hired us both. Later on, we asked him why he hired us, and he said, you were the first two people that didn't come drunk to the interview. Yeah, that's fine.

[27:23] SUE DUNHAM: What an endorsement. But we had a great time. I was hired as the office manager, and I had really no experience being an office manager, but that didn't seem to matter.

[27:34] KURT DUNHAM: The fellow that hired us knew we were on the ball.

[27:37] SUE DUNHAM: Yeah. And it was great fun. But the unfun part for me was that it took us an hour from Fort Myers to get to Sanibel, mostly during the winter season when everything was crowded and exciting for the people who were down, but not exciting for me to spend an hour out and an hour back every day. And we were living at the marina downtown at that point in the city marina. And I went in to get my mail, and one of the office people said, tomorrow's my last day. And I asked her where she was going. And then I said, tell me about your job. And she did. And I went in the next morning and I said, I'd like this job. And I ended up being hired. And I worked for the city for 15 years. And it was fabulous. It was probably the best job I ever had. Well, maybe not quite the best, but it was great.

[28:42] KURT DUNHAM: My job didn't last as long, about three years. And the Mel Fisher company decided selling this stuff off quickly wasn't a really good thing to do. So they closed all that down.

[28:52] SUE DUNHAM: But a hurricane didn't have. Didn't have anything to do with it.

[28:56] KURT DUNHAM: No. But I had to deal with decorator swords as part of my job, and it piqued my interest in swords. I always had that as a kid. What's a real sword like? So the decorator swords were not real. As an engineer, I realized this is not what they would really be. So I got a replica of a real sword. And then I wondered how you could use that without actually dying in the process. I went back online, found out people are learning how to use swords. All right. It just piqued my curiosity. I went over to the group that was learning. I said, I just have to learn how you not die. Then I'm done. Unfortunately, there's an adrenaline rush when you do this. And I guess I'm an addict to adrenaline because I started in 2005. I'm almost 84 years old. I'm still teaching sword fighting and it's really still wonderful.

[29:54] SUE DUNHAM: It has been wonderful for you. And while you found something that you love, I also found something I love and that's painting. And I work with acrylics, I take lessons. And I have been lucky enough to have gotten into a wonderful gallery in Naples, which would have continued to be wonderful except Hurricane Ian came along and destroyed the gallery and wasn't rebuilt. But I'm still painting and I love that work.

[30:30] KURT DUNHAM: It also ruined our house now. What house? We lived on a boat, but during the recession, all the house property values fell and I said, you know, someday we could get old and I we should put money in the housing market so it floats and then we can, when the time comes, we can sell whatever that is and buy the house we want. A realtor took us around to a lot of foreclosures and things like that and none of them appealed. In order to rent them, I would have had to have them rebuilt somehow because they were botched by the owners. And then finally he took us to one house and sue walked through the front door and I that was it, said, this is it. This is the one. And so we made an offer and got it and we were great. We loved the house, except for there was one arrangement we wanted to make, but the floors were combinations of tiles and wood and they were arranged in a fixed pattern and we couldn't change the pattern without much more expense. Then we had a flood, a plumbing leak. It destroyed the floors of the house. All the appliances were put in the garage, all our files were put in the garage. All the damaged furniture was either thrown away or what could be saved was packed away. And then Hurricane Ian put 3ft of water in the house, ruined all the appliances in the garage, turned all our files to paper mache and basically we started over. Started over. We took down the wall we didn't like and everything is much better than it was. And we are happy as clams. We have a house, we have a pool, we have a dock for a smaller boat. We had a small boat. We lost it in the hurricane. And as soon as we get all the insurance money squared away, we'll start looking for another small boat. I think that's our story today.

[32:27] SUE DUNHAM: I think that is okay.

[32:29] KURT DUNHAM: See you at home.