Tracey Necole Broadhead Frith still has her childhood diary, and it’s chock-full of mentions of Darin Malcolm White.
Ms. Broadhead and Mr. White, now both 56, were born and raised in Oakland, Calif. They met in 1979 as seventh graders at Westlake Junior High School, now Westlake Middle School, and began dating a couple of years later. A few months into their relationship, Mr. White broke things off with Ms. Broadhead when he learned she would be going to Bishop O’Dowd High School, a private Catholic school in Oakland, the next year while he would remain at Westlake.
“She was an amazing young woman, and I just knew some other guy who had means and who grew up in a family that had far more than I had was going to be the kind of guy that would sweep her off her feet,” Mr. White said. “I’d never envisioned I could compete with the folks at Bishop O’Dowd.”
Ms. Broadhead was devastated; she was crazy about Mr. White. Although the relationship didn’t end well, Mr. White was the first boy to ever tell her that he loved her, and her diary documents it. “He called me on the phone after he broke up with me, and we were trying to figure out what was going on,” Ms. Broadhead said. “Like why did he break up with me? And he just said, ‘I love you.’ I said, ‘I love you, too,’ and then he ran away because we were 13.”
