26. In 1958, she married a beatnik poet
In 1956, Nina met Don Ross, a Beatnik poet who worked as a fairground barker in Atlantic City. Ross lived the lifestyle of a drifter, but he was irresistible to a lonely Nina: ‘he was at the bar [the Midtown] every night, and I was lonely and drinking milk’, she explained. The Waymon family did not like him and saw him as a leech, but nonetheless, Nina and Ross married in 1958. Perhaps her family was right all along, however, as Nina swiftly regretted the marriage and they separated after less than a year, legally divorcing in 1960.
