Seventy Years Married

 

This photo was taken when my parents were courting. The car is my mother's -  new Chevrolet she bought with her earnings as a registered nurse.  She used to tell the story that this car was from the last batch off the assembly line in Detroit before they stopped producting cars and began producing machines needed for the war effort... and the doctors she worked with kept trying to buy it from her, but she wouldn't sell it.

They were married April 10, 1944.  They celebrate this anniversary on the other shore.

Here's a poem I wrote about them a few years ago:

 

T

Corot Blue

puckered with clouds,

Damask wards off rain

Father Hopkins, lick ink into my pen

shake blue over paper.

My parents’ wedding day

Cold and blustery in 1944

Outside the rectory of Saint Agnes Parish

In the brittle afternoon sun.

My mother holding her hat on her head,

Shivering in her new suit.

No wedding gown for the non-Catholic ceremony

Of thirtysomethings in the rectory.

My father dapper happy in a new dark suit

So glad she said yes.