Family Secrets, Anniversaries, Engagements

My parents kept a secret from their children until their fiftieth anniversary!
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I thought my three-and-a-half-week engagement after six months of dating was short…until my aunt let it slip about my parents at the fiftieth anniversary party. She said something like, “We all thought James was crazy marrying someone he barely knew.”
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Heads turned and mouths fell open. “Say what?” We needed to have the full story right away.

It was 1944 and World War II had center stage. My twenty-six year-old father was in the army and on a train when he met my mother. She was a nineteen-year-old nurse cadet. 

The ride must have been a long one, and the chemistry strong, because they wrote letters afterward, then my father took his first leave to go visit her. He met her mother in Alabama and then took her to meet his mother in Hickory Flat, Mississippi. Then they married on that same trip! We have what we believe to be those letters, now that they’ve passed on.  

Sometimes when I’m writing fiction, I wonder if a storyline is believable or not. Pretty much every time, I’m reminded that real life is indeed stranger than fiction.



It’s fun to hear about people meeting in all kind of crazy ways, how they came together and stayed together.  ​

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​My parents’ short courtship, if you can really call it that, resulted in a marriage that lasted from 1944 until 2012 when they parted in death.

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My own twenty-fifth wedding anniversary is this month, and I'm so thankful!
Do you have or know of an interesting engagement story?

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