Dr. Howard Kaplan and Romana Laks Kaplan, Storytellers

DR. HOWARD KAPLAN AND ROMANA LAKS KAPLAN, Donors

The Center’s presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream this season brings back memories of my first date with Romana. We go back to 1954 for that one. I was a young man in the army, stationed at Walter Reed, and I read whereby the Old Vic Company and the Saddlers Wells Ballet had put together a joint performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Being in the military, I ran right down to the USO and got a pair of tickets, which I found out later were scarcer than hen’s teeth.

I called a friend of mine up in New York (where I'm from) and said, “Look I’ve got two tickets to this performance, do me a favor — get me a special date.”

I wasn’t going out with anybody at the time, I just had a pair of tickets, so I called a friend of mine…and said, “Look I’ve got two tickets to this performance, do me a favor — get me a special date.” (I was trolling with my tickets.)

My friend found somebody who wanted to go and she told me, “You’ll like her. Her parents go to the Museum of Modern Art.” A pedigree!

And that’s how I met Romana. She later told me that she would have gone with anybody to see that performance; she didn’t care if he was a green Martian. But we hit it off and, with one thing leading to another, here we are. We were married in ‘56 and have been going to theater and dance and music ever since. We feel that, over the years, we've seen just about everybody that’s been around.

So A Midsummer Night’s Dream brought me my wife and the life we live together. I’d do it again. I think she would, too.