I was the one in school who was never going to get married. I had a plan for my life and nothing was going to stop it. Oh, I liked boys and dating, but I was NOT going to get serious.
As a matter of fact, before I left for college, I had been dating a coast guard boy (he was in his 20;’s and I was barely 18). I was having fun; he was serious. He gave me an ultimatum - don’t go to college or I’m out of here. I chose the “I’m out of here.” I did cry for three days, but I was not going to change my mind.
So off I went to college.
My goal was to become a home economics teacher. However, I quickly got disillusioned with school. It was nothing like I expected it to be. So, my new goal became to date at least one guy in every fraternity before I finished college. (That’s how my GPA got so low!)
One of the guys I dated (Al) was from Phi Beta Kappa and, although I didn’t know it at the time, he was engaged to someone else! (It probably wouldn’t have mattered to me, anyway, had I known!) Anyway, some guy in the same fraternity, named Bill Downes, saw me with Al and asked him if it would be alright for him to ask me out. Al said sure (why not, he had another babe on the side!). So, the next thing I know, here’s a guy I didn’t know at my door asking me to go out.
Well, he WAS a fraternity guy, so why not. We went out and had a good time. If my memory serves me right, we dated quite a few times and then he just disappeared off the face of the planet. No calls, no nothing. Just gone.
Oh well, on to the next fraternity. I spent the next couple of months exploring the “offerings” at other fraternities. Nothing serious, just having a blast and being ornery. (And I wonder why my daughter is so ornery.) I even chased a football player up to New Jersey to get a date with a Theta Chi - that’s another whole story!
Then, in the spring, in marched Bill Downes back into my life. He said he saw me downtown and I gave him the brush off look. I don’t even remember seeing him! Anyway, we started dating again and that was the end of my fraternity shopping. I found my guy.
We dated for 2-1/2 years. He finished college and went off to Georgia for army training. He was in ROTC at college and his draft number for Vietnam was four so he decided if he was going to Nam, he’d go as an officer, helicopter pilot. While he was gone, he got lonely for me. On a break during the summer, he came back to town and proposed to me. We were riding in the car, stopped at a stop light, when he said, “If I asked you to marry me, what would you say?” I said yes. I think that is when he gave me his fraternity pin that you can see in this picture.
The next thing I remember is getting engaged. He took me to a jewelry store in town where he had picked out two rings. I had the choice of either one. One looked bigger than the other, and being the nice girl, I picked the smaller of the two. It just so happened that it was actually the more expensive diamond! It pays to be nice!
He went back to the army while I started my junior year. He was in Mineral Wells, Texas; I was in Newark, Delaware. We wrote and planned our wedding for Christmas as this was the only time he was able to get off.
Because I didn’t have any money, his family paid to have a small ceremony and reception in Newark. It snowed the day of the wedding, so I was afraid I would not make it up to Newark in time for the wedding. Bill said he would “come get me in a snowplow if he had to.” Isn’t he wonderful!
We were married on December 26, 1970.
After the ceremony, we packed up a U-haul and headed for Mineral Wells, Texas. That was our honeymoon. And we’ve been happily married ever since (at least mostly!).
