A Woman's Choice

• Share

For four days Mrs. Helen Zuhars Goad MacDowell pondered a question that few women have ever had to decide: which of her two husbands did she want most? Her dilemma stemmed from the fact that the Japanese had held her first husband, Army Air Forces Lieut. Harold Goad, a prisoner without notifying the U.S. He had been listed as missing in action for a year after his bomber exploded over Burma. Last fall, the War Depart ment officially pronounced him dead, and two months later Mrs. Goad was married to Ensign Robert A. MacDowell, U.S.N.R.

Then, a fortnight ago, at Long Beach, Calif., she got numbing news — her first husband had been found alive and well in a Rangoon hospital.

Immediately she cabled: "Darling, I am so glad you are alive; will see you soon. I love you with all my heart." But naturally she loved her second husband too. Since she had married him innocently, the law posed no problem—she was left to make her own choice. Last week, while Ensign MacDowell was at sea, she decided.

"My marriage to Mac was wonderful," she said. "Perhaps in some ways Mac was closer to me, but I know now that Harold is the one I love." She went home to Portsmouth, Ohio, to annul Marriage No. 2 and await Husband No.1.

Said Lieut. Goad, in Calcutta: "I am a lucky guy."