Local woman publishes book on true love story
By Steve Herring
Published in News on February 25, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/STEVE HERRING
Eugenia Daniels displays her new book, "My Poor Baby." It is available at Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million and Amazon.
"My Poor Baby" is a new book by Goldsboro resident Eugenia Daniels chronicling her true love story that started in high school and was interrupted by life only to be rekindled 40 years later.
However, the reunion was short-lived as they have to deal with her husband's dementia.
Mrs. Daniels met her high school beau, Walter Daniels, when she was 15, but her parents told him she couldn't date until she was 16.
He waited a year.
"I did promise to marry him upon graduation from high school," she said. "Once I became a junior and a senior I began to realize that I needed to go to college.
"So I went to college, and we went our different ways. Forty years later, the Lord put us back together."
They married, but seven years into the marriage she began to realize he was experiencing memory problems.
"It was a little more profound than, 'I just can't find my keys,'" she said. "I decided I needed to write a book. First of all to say how rejoiceful and happy we were to have reunited after 40 years.
"Also to then focus on the treatment process and to let the people know that once we come into the world we have a mission and a destiny in Jesus and when we reunited we are able to succeed and realize our purpose for being on the earth."
Daniels died in 2011.
Mrs. Daniels started writing the book in 2003, but it turned into an 11-year process t0 finally get the book published last December, she said.
"It is a true story," she said. "It is a love story. I told my husband when we got together, 'This is remarkable. This unbelievable. Here it is 40 years later, and we are back together.'
"I said, 'I am going to write about this.' He said, 'You are going to write a story about us? What are you going to say?' I said, 'First of all about how we are in love. It took a back seat, came back together, reunited and it just reignited.'"
Mrs. Daniels received her undergraduate degree from Fayetteville State University and master's degree from Georgia State University in counseling and psychological services.
Once she completed college, her first job was teaching high school business classes in Kinston.
Three years later she married and divorced 23 years later in 1991.
She married Daniels in 2000 and retired in 2003.
Daniels' first wife died in 1991.
He approached his former high school sweetheart about reuniting, but Mrs. Daniels said she wasn't interested because of her "dedication to the Lord" and her ministry.
"So, he went on again," she said. "He came back several times. I finally prayed about it and listened to the Lord and my own inner spirit. I agreed to reunite in 2000."
They agreed to forgo the "pomp and circumstances" because they were just ready to be together, she said.
"It was mostly marvelous," she said.
But along with dementia her husband suffered from two forms of arthritis as well as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Eventually he had to be placed in a nursing home because he became a "wanderer" and would walk away from home.
"I couldn't chance that," she said.
She was worried as well that he would get up at night and fall.
"It is a story that I think all people need to read," she said. "It is all about love whenever you find your self in a position -- don't always think that you were thrust in there and that it was bad.
"It was for your good because God chose me. My husband could have married anybody else. But the Lord chose me to look after him."
Mrs. Daniels does not have any children, but her late husband has four.
Mrs. Daniels said she is excited abut her first book and has started on her second that is also about life stories.
"My Poor Baby" costs $12.99 and was published by Kingdom Living Publishing. It is also available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million.