A great new post by Ecumen guest blogger Jim Klobuchar. You can read about Jim here and his other Changing Aging posts here.

On the vintage movie channel the other day, a woman I met more than 30 years ago swept across the screen in an out of the arms of Fred Astaire.

You could not have mistaken Ginger Rogers, the actress and dancer. I last saw her on spring day in downtown Minnepolis after she held my arm mischievously on her way to an elevator in the old Sheraton Ritz Hotel. A telephone call interrupted my undivided vigil inn front of the television set, and I had to leave it to talk in another room. When I returned Ginger Rogers had danced out of the kitchen, and the film was over.

My disappointment was real, but it invited a few moments of remembrance. People who have spent a lifetime in daily journalism, as I did, frequently are asked about the most memorable celebrity in their experience. If you’d spent 45 years in it, the range could be broad-kings, presidents, generals, quarterbacks and more. I invariably answer the question with "Ginger Rogers," and a story.

She was the visiting guest at a downtown Minneapolis style show in which I was the co-host. We did an interview on stage and she made one or two cameo appearances later, but we had time to chat backstage. She was a delight, animated and curious. She was staying for another two days to promote a fashion line and asked if I knew of a jogging route downtown where she could run safely. Did I know of someone who would like to be her jogging partner. I said I thought she’d never ask.

I showed up in the hotel lobby the next morning in my burgundy jogging trunks and t-shirt. She flowed out of the elevator looking gorgeous in her running suit, and men in the lobby melted. I gave her my arm en route to the exit. Scores of eyes peered at the scene in the lobby in astonishment. We jogged up the Nicollet Mall, around tiny Loring Lake and returned down the Mall, where she stopped to admire a storefront. The day was warm and glorious. People began gathering. Impulsively she asked if I’d like to do a few steps. Naturally, I was horrified. "Ginger Rogers, I dance like a sleepwalking rhino." She scoffed, so we danced. The crowd applauded. She beamed and cuffed me on the cheek.

At our breakfast snack at the hotel she was a marvelous companion. Near the end I said, "the movie of yours that I…" She laughed and interrupted. "You liked ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’ How did she know? "Fellows your age," she said, "always ask about that movie," It was a love story with Joseph Cotton, which I saw as a 16-year-old and was inflamed by the possibilities of romantic love. "I’ll bet you remember some of the lyrics," she teased. I nodded. She cued me and I talked it through: "I’ll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places, that this heart of mine embraces" I paused. She finished "In that small café, the park across the way…the childeren’s carousel…the chestnut tree, the wishing well." The entire dining room, eavesdropping, lit with applause. When she died 20 years later, I wrote, remembering how she left the table. She tweaked my arm and said "I’ll be seeing you." And so she might.