Mom's Birthday Article

My mother-in-law's 50th Birthday just passed....

Dinner and a movie were just part of a big eveningA husband puts in extra effort to make sure his wife's 50th birthday is something to treasure.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer
Published July 19, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - Gotcha! That was Bob Johnston's triumphant exclamation when his wife walked into the surprise 50th birthday party he'd organized for her at the Muvico theaters at BayWalk.

She had known that they were going to a movie and dinner. It was at dinner, she had suspected from recent whisperings and surreptitious phone calls, that she would get her surprise.

"I was wrong," Loretta Johnston wrote in an e-mail telling the St. Petersburg Times about the celebration. "It WAS the movie! My husband had bought out a movie theater (250 seats) for the premier weekend of Pirates of the Caribbean and invited our family and friends to attend a private showing of the movie with us."

"I was totally surprised," she said this week. "My brother said he had never seen my face so beet red. It was such an amazing day."

Her husband had gotten the idea months earlier, when he noticed that Muvico rented its theaters for business events. He spoke with the manager and made arrangements for the birthday celebration that coincidentally fell on the opening weekend of Johnny Depp's blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

"It was a lot of money," Bob Johnston, an instructor at Pinellas Technical Education Center, said of the $2,500 expenditure. "I had to buy every seat in the theater. It was funny, because with it being that much money, we never spend that much money without talking to each other."

Facing the predicament of how to consult his wife about the money without giving away the secret, Bob Johnston said he asked her if he could spend it on something "totally ridiculous." She agreed.

"She just knew that I was going to surprise her, but she didn't know where or how and when," he said.

His wife, who is a corporate account manager for Weight Watchers, had her suspicions. Married for almost 28 years, with three adult children, Meghan Alfaro, Phillip and Caitlin, and one grandchild, 17-month-old Mariana, she thought her husband might be organizing a cruise.

"I knew something was going to happen, but I didn't know where or what," she said, adding that she made sure not to eavesdrop on phone calls or ask any questions. "I didn't want to ruin my surprise."

The weekend Pirates opened, her husband bought a couple of tickets for the movie and told her they were going to a movie and dinner. It was three days before her July 12 birthday. Guests, some of whom had traveled from out of town, had been told to gather at the theater 45 minutes early."

And as we walked in, the whole theater just yells, 'Surprise,' and she doesn't know what to do and she just kind of ran back and hid behind the wall," her husband recounted this week. "Once she turned the corner again and realized that she knew everybody, she said, 'Did you rent the theater?' It was just wonderful. We had about 45 people there."

Daughter Meghan gave a PowerPoint presentation of her mother's life.

Bob Johnston is still grinning about the surprise he managed to get past his wife.

"The biggest thing for me was just the thrill of pulling it off," he said. Four years ago, as his 50th birthday approached, she had done the same to him.

"I was determined that since she had gotten me so well, I was going to get her," he said.