The Girl Who Came Through Vickery Gate

The Girl Who Came through Vickery Gate is a true story of a rare romance that travels through a couple’s love and incredible life beginning from the first moment Dottie Williamson enters the gate at Kings Point Academy and meets Jim Plessinger until her last breath, when she passes through another gate.

Jim and Dottie were soul mates and were happily married for almost sixty-one years. Dottie comes to the United States Merchant Marine Academy in New York to meet Jim on a blind date put in motion by a chance meeting of their fathers and attend the Saturday activities consisting of a football game, tea, and dance on October 30, 1948.  When Dottie walks through Vickery Gate, Jim is done for.

“She saw me there, so she came up and put her right hand up and said, ‘I’m Dottie.’ I put my hand out and I held her hand. I looked in her eyes and said to myself, ‘I will never, ever let go of this hand in this world and the next.’ I was absolutely smitten, just blown away.”

So much so that on that first date, the skinny young man summoned the nerve to give Dottie a lingering kiss, profess his love, and propose marriage during the last dance.

Stunned, she ran.

“I didn’t know where I was,” Jim said, spending the next few days in a heartbroken stupor. “I had poured out my heart.” But then there came a letter from Mount Ida College, where Dottie was studying, to say that she had a wonderful time and would very much like to see him.

The poor Jim met Dottie’s wealthy family and was surprised when she happily drove to his family’s flat to meet his parents. Dating right up until Jim’s graduation from Kings Point, they married nine days after on December 22, 1951.

This relationship survives Jim spending a year at sea; becoming a Naval Officer; unemployment; moving; the loss of their first child, Susan; having two other daughters Diane and Sally; and becoming a lawyer at almost forty years old in Connecticut and later on in California. Dottie, who “never failed to get a job within an hour,” managed to be a doting mother, charming hostess, and eventually a real estate agent. Then that shattering day comes. Dottie dies in Jim’s arms, leaving this world here on earth from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.