He was only trying to outrun the clock. In 1956, with deployment looming and love already slipping through his fingers, he poured everything he could not say out loud into a melody. The lyrics were simple, almost fragile, but they carried the weight of a man begging time to bend, just once, in his favor. In that bare church basement, surrounded by friends and humming equipment, he wasn’t chasing history. He was clinging to a moment.
Yet the world quietly found him. Teenagers pressed closer on crowded dance floors as the record spun. Decades later, brides and grooms chose the same trembling words to walk into their futures. Singers reinterpreted it, generations reimagined it, but the pulse remained: a plea for one more minute with the person you can’t bear to lose. The song endured because it told the truth about love—that we never feel ready to say goodbye.
