The new coil came in and I installed it 2 days ago. This was in fact the problem. I guess I've never seen a coil get progressively weaker over time. My experience was that they may cause problems while the engine is running and finally failing abruptly. This one caused progressively harder and harder starts but once started the engine ran fine. Hope this information helps someone in the future. FY the car has 124,000 miles on it. Many great posts have helped me do a lot of good maintenance on this car which now runs like the dream in which it was created.