New Jersey, June 2015 and 65 years ago …

Builders,

Last week, Grace and I drove from Florida to New Jersey, joining 60 other members of our family to celebrate my parents 65th wedding anniversary. It was a family reunion that extended over several days. On the 20th, we had a formal party at Mayfair Farms, in the exact location of the original reception in 1950.

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Above, my Parents are seated before their four children and our spouses. It is a complement to my parents that many people who encounter the family often cannot tell who was born into the family and who married into it, as my parents treat us all with the same kindness, respect and love.

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Above, 4th and 5th from the left, My Father and Mother. The fireplace on the left in the photo is the same one we are standing in front of in the top photo. 

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My Parents met by chance at the Jersey shore the summer after WWII ended. They waited until my fathers graduation form the Naval Academy in 1949 to be married in the spring of 1950. Seventy years after they met, they remain the joy of each others lives.

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My parents wanted everyone on hand to understand how blessed they felt to have each other for all of these years. My mother and father both came from homes of great love, but their own parents only had 34 and 37 years respectively before their marriages ended when their spouse passed. My parents wanted to say that their years together were a gift, not earned, just bestowed by fate, and they accepted this with great humility in the presence of others not so fortunate.

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 Sunday night, with most of the family and friends on their way home, found my parents home suddenly quiet. While all of the afternoon’s conversations had been on family and good memories, my father, now almost 90 and somewhat frail, took the last hour of the evening to meet an obligation he finds very important;  I sit beside him and listen while he looks back through the decades to remember and speak the names and the stories of good men, who’s devotion to their Shipmates, the Navy and our Country cost them everything, including a chance to grow old with the families they loved. This spoken remembrance is central to my father’s gratitude for the great fortune of being married for 65 years.

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-ww.

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Any qualities of character I may have are directly attributable to my parents. When I encounter anyone my age in a terrible position in life, my first thought has always been, and will always remain “Without the fortune of being born to my parents, that could be me.”

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