Susan Writes

When I drove past the Putnam County Courthouse yesterday, I paused to remember an event that took place there on October 28, 1938. The day my parents married. I don’t have a single picture of them on their wedding day. Just pictures in my mind.

Mom was young, only 19. Dad was 26. Seems quite a gap in ages. But I’m sure Mom was mature for her age; she was the oldest of three sisters and had been forced to take the responsibility of her family’s daily home life when her mother became ill. Dad had completed three years of college and taught in the Pickett County schools and worked with his grandfather on the family farm.

One summer Sunday afternoon after Mom graduated from high school, she and Dad were among the many young people who gathered for a weekly pick-up baseball game in a farm field. After the game, Dad offered Mom a ride home and that was the first time they were in a car together. Mom’s sister told me that after that Sunday afternoon, Dad was always around their house.

With both their parents’ blessings, Dad and Mom travelled alone from their homes in Byrdstown to Cookeville on that October day in 1938. Mom worn a plum colored, knee-length satin dress that she’d made. When they arrived at the courthouse, they had all the paperwork in order and a judge agreed to marry them. All they needed was a witness.

It was suggested that someone from a store could be a witness. While Mom waited in the judge’s office, Dad walked across the street to Terry Brother’s Department Store (now the Lighthouse.) As soon as he walked in the store a sales clerk asked if he needed someone to ‘stand up with him and his bride.’ So their only witness was a woman who had apparently witnessed many other weddings.

Mom and Dad took a weekend honeymoon trip to the Smokey Mountain National Park. As they drove through Lenoir City late that Friday afternoon, they heard music, a high school band playing. Dad took advantage of the situation and told his new bride, “Listen, the band is playing just for us.” That’s the only event of the honeymoon that Mom shared with her younger sisters.

I wish I’d known my parents on their wedding day and during their early years of marriage. By the time I came along, they’d been married for almost nine years and they had my brother, five years older than me. Dad had served time in the army during World War II. While he was away, Mom divided her time living with her parents and her mother-in-law.

The best glimpse I have of my parents as a young couple is a letter Dad wrote to Mom on March 20, 1946, from Karlsruhe, Germany, where he was stationed as a solider. The first lines are, “This is the letter I’ve dreamed of writing. I’m on my way home.” And the last lines read, “Darling, I do love you. Right now I’m just so darned happy.”

I can imagine that on a clear blue sky fall day in 1938 inside the Putnam County Courthouse, a beautiful bride and a handsome groom were both just so darned happy.

Filed under: Anniversary, Memory | Tagged: anniversary, Mom and Dad marry, wedding |