For Pete's sake, it's not an artifact from the Battle Of The Alamo...historic my ass. Give the woman the damn BENCH!!!
Cash made his mark in S.A.
Web Posted: 10/29/2004 12:00 AM CDT
Christopher Anderson
Express-News Staff Writer
An 18-year-old cadet from Brooks AFB and his 17-year-old girlfriend used a pocketknife to carve their names on a secluded River Walk park bench more than a half century ago.
That's how "Johnny loves Vivian" was immortalized in a cedar plank in downtown San Antonio.
The inscription outlasted the actual romance. Few people would care about either except for a recent revelation: "Johnny" was future country star Johnny Cash.
Vivian Distin, Cash's first wife and the woman to whom he pledged to remain faithful in his song "I Walk the Line," confirmed the late Cash's enduring contribution to River Walk graffiti. Having rediscovered the bench this month, she said she wants it, but the city said it's historic and likely won't give it up.
Distin divorced Cash after 13 years because he started abusing drugs and cheated on her, but said last week she would always warmly remember her early days with Cash.
Distin, who has since remarried, said she met Cash in a San Antonio roller skating rink while she was a student at St. Mary's Catholic School. Over the next few weeks, she and Cash spent all their free time together.
"Johnny didn't have a car, so he went most places on a bus or with friends," she said. "We would walk on the river, and we sat there and did what we shouldn't have done and carved our names in the bench."
Shortly after the young couple left their mark, the military sent Cash to Germany.
Over the next three years, the couple exchanged more than 10,000 pages of love letters; Cash frequently referred to the bench in them.
"He would ask if I was visiting the bench and (say) how often he thought about that walk and us carving our names," Distin said. "It was a big part of our courtship."
An excerpt from one of Cash's love letters shows how much the bench meant to him: "Are you still going to keep 'our bench' with the names on it. I hope you do. I can just see the people in S.A. walking around with 'Johnny loves Vivian' on the seat of their pants, but I don't care who knows it."
Distin, who had four daughters with Cash, identified the bench a couple weeks ago when she visited San Antonio to see friends and family.
She said that seeing it again in what she believes was its original location near the La Mansion hotel was beyond belief.
"I was blown away," she said.
Ann Sharpsteen, a writer and TV producer who is collaborating on a book Distin is writing about life with Cash, tentatively led "I Walked the Line," actually initiated the successful search for the bench, which she hoped to give to Distin.
"Never in my wildest dreams did I think that it was still by the river," Sharpsteen said. "I thought that it would be maybe in some dirty antique store somewhere."
Sharpsteen started off by calling the city's Parks & Recreation Department.
Lincoln St. George, the city's river operations superintendent, did a little research and learned that the city still had 11 wooden benches that might have been on the River Walk in 1951 when Cash and Distin carved their names.
St. George took Distin on a tour of the River Walk two weeks ago, and after inspecting a few of the benches, she settled on one near La Mansion hotel.
"It was almost like she knew it was her bench," St. George said. "She kept wanting to go back to that bench. When she sat there, she just said, 'Yes, this is it.'"
The inscription is a little hard to make out due to decades of weathering, but most of the letters in "Johnny" and "Vivian" are visible.
The city quickly stowed the bench in a locked storage room out of fear that someone would steal or damage it.
Distin asked city officials if she could have the original bench if she paid to have it replicated.
"I would treasure it, and my kids would treasure it," she said.
But due to its age and the fact that it was built based on a design by River Walk architect Robert H. H. Hugman, the bench is considered historic and likely could not be relinquished even in an auction, said Malcolm Matthews, the city's Parks & Recreation Department director.
"Her other alternative was just to have it protected," Matthews said. "We agree with that. That's probably the extent of her request that we could honor. We will keep it and have it as an artifact and leave it at that."
Distin said Thursday that she was disappointed because city officials led her to believe that the bench would be hers and she'd told her now-grown children all about it.
She said she hopes the city changes its mind.
"I'm at their mercy," she said.
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What's the problem? Break out the blueprints and build another one. She offered to pay for it.But due to its age and the fact that it was built based on a design by River Walk architect Robert H. H. Hugman, the bench is considered historic and likely could not be relinquished even in an auction, said Malcolm Matthews, the city's Parks & Recreation Department director.
Give the lady the damn bench, SA.
I agree...give it to her!
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