A Love Story

Like many of Dad's stories, his story yesterday about his courtship of Mother was part fact and part fiction.

The facts: Mom and Dad met in the late 1940s at SMU's Dallas College, a night school for all the post-war students. Mother was head nurse for pediatrics at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Parkland had already sent her for a year's training at Johns Hopkins to set up the first nursery for premature babies in Texas. Parkland was moving toward consolidating their nursing school with Texas State College for Women and needed mother to have a teaching degree so she could be a nursing instructor. She was going to Dallas College to take care of some prerequisites before Parkland sent her to Columbia Teachers' College. Both of her parents were alive and living in East Texas. Her father died in 1955 and her mother died in 1972.

Dad was able to return from World War II to the same job he held before the war. He was living with his parents had limited ambition. The only reason he had a job at all was that his mother had threatened to kick him out of the house if he "didn't put down his books and get a job." He went to Dallas College on the GI Bill at the urging of his boss. Both of his parents were alive. His mother was slightly older than his father. They died 2 weeks apart during the winter of 1964-1965.

Dad is seven years older than Mom. He made a big deal of Mom's father being 7 years older than her mother and Mom's brother-in-law being 7 years older than her sister. He would tease me that my husband was too young since he is only 4 years older than I am.

Dad's Version--only his viewpoint, repeated 20 times:

“I met my wife at Dallas College. We were both working during the day and going to school at night. That was true of us."

"She was living with her mother in Dallas. Her father was dead. Her mother had been a widow for a long time. That was true of her."

"I never met her father. He was dead by the time I met her. That was true of me." (My grandfather lived with them during the week in Dallas and went home to East Texas on the weekends for the first several years of their marriage.)

"Her mother wanted her to get an education, but she couldn't afford it since she was a widow. That was true of her."

"We met in class at night school. She was only a couple of years younger than I was. She still is only a couple of years younger than I am. That is true of us."

"I am 86 years old and my wife is in her 80s. That is true of me."

"When she met me, she fell in love with me, and I fell in love with her. That was true of us."

Well, at least some if it was right...