Seventy-two Years Ago Today

 My parents (Red and Wathada Thomas) met and married in 1953. 

Wathada wrote:

I met Red right at the beginning of 1953, just after the Christmas holidays.  We started dating and by that summer we were talking about getting married. 

[NOTE: I can't find where I have it written down, but I remember being told that Dad was on a date with another girl when he met Mom. The first thing he said to her was "Hello Sunshine."

I have it in the back of my mind that this is the girl Dad was with when he met Mom. I wouldn't stake my life on it, though. Anyway, back to the story...]

When Red and I were dating, we had a routine of things we did pretty regularly. Almost every Saturday night in the summertime, we went to dance at Crystal Palace in Coloma.  It was THE place to go.  There was a bar area where you had to be 21 years or older to enter.  But they had most of the tables in other areas and around the outside of the dance floor.  We could go there and that’s where most of the people we knew sat anyway, no matter what their age was.  Those tables were just the best places to sit.  They had the biggest of the “big bands” at Crystal Palace all summer long every summer.  We have danced to the music of all the big bands there at Crystal Palace.  

On summer Friday nights while Red and I were dating we usually went to the Sunset Drive-in Theater between Hartford and Watervliet.  The first movie they showed on Saturday nights was nearly always a western, and very often it was a Roy Rogers movie.  Red loved Roy Rogers and does to this day.  He would watch that movie, and then he would get over in the back seat of his car and go to sleep.  I would sit in the front seat and watch the second movie, which would be a regular movie.  When the movie was over, I would drive myself home in Red’s car and wake him up so he could drive himself home to Bangor.  Red had taught me how to drive, but I didn’t have a driver’s license.  I didn’t get a license until I was 19 years old and we had been married for two years.

Well, Red worked on construction then and was tired after working all day.  And sometimes I think he had to work on Saturday too.  So even though that doesn’t sound like a very exciting date, it worked for Red and me.

PHOTO: Wedding supper, the day after the wedding.

PHOTO: Wedding supper. L-R - Jay Bridges, Annie Hicks, Ulysses Hicks, Bernice Bridges holding Cindy, Cleffie Burford, Bill Thomas, Eileen Thomas.

(Annie and Ulys are my great-grandparents. Cleffie is their daughter, my grandmother, Wathada's mother. Bernice is Cleffie's sister, Jay is her husband, Cindy is their daughter. Bill Thomas is my grandfather, Red's father. Eileen Thomas is Red's sister-in-law, wife of his brother Bernarde Thomas.)

I don't know who took the picture. Probably Christie Thomas (Bill's wife, my grandmother.) I don't know who Annie is staring at across the table. Probably Bernarde.

There aren't any pictures of the wedding itself. Here is a blow-by-blow description of the event, written by my mother:

Red and I got married on Saturday, September 12, 1953 at the Methodist Church in Hartford, Michigan.  We got married inside that church just to satisfy Red’s mother.  She was a member of that church but never attended any services.  She belonged to one of the women’s clubs there.  We had a very small wedding.  We only had our parents there, my brothers and Bernice and Jay.  Red’s brother, Bernarde was his best man and his wife, Eileen was my matron of honor.  I was barely acquainted with Eileen, and I wanted to ask Bernice to be my matron of honor.  But when Red’s mother asked me who was going to “stand up” with me and I told her I was going to have Bernice, she told me I had to have Eileen because Red was having Bernarde.  She said it wouldn’t be right to have anyone but Eileen. Naturally, I kept my mouth shut and had Eileen for my matron of honor.  I felt like it was Red’s mother’s wedding – not mine. 

Our wedding day was very strange.  Red and I had got our blood tests done just before the Labor Day weekend.  Somebody made a mistake and Red’s blood didn’t get refrigerated so it spoiled.  So we had to do that again at the last minute and they were trying to rush it through.  We couldn’t get our marriage license without the results of those blood tests, so it got to be our wedding day and we still didn’t even know if we could get married that evening or not.  The florist was a friend of Red’s family and she was waiting to hear whether or not to make our corsages.  The minister of the Methodist Church was waiting to know if the wedding was on or off. We finally did get the blood test paperwork that day, and Red and I drove to the Van Buren County Courthouse in Paw Paw to get our marriage license that afternoon.  At that time, you had to get your marriage license five days before you got married unless you could get a judge to waive that five-day waiting period.  When we got there they said the judge was out fishing somewhere.  One clerk said she knew which lake he was fishing at and she volunteered to go find him and bring him to the courthouse.  Or maybe she just went to the lake and got him to sign something to waive that five-day waiting period – I don’t remember which.  But we finally did get our marriage license that day, and the five-day waiting period was waived.  When we finally left the courthouse, it had started raining.  We ran out to the car with our marriage license in hand, and the car wouldn’t start.  So Red got out of the car and pushed it while I popped the clutch and got it started.  Then Red took me home to Watervliet so I could get ready for our wedding, and he went to let the minister and the florist know we would have the wedding.  Then he went home to Bangor to get ready for the wedding. 

Nobody was at home at my house in Watervliet.  It was the day of the annual Whirlpool picnic somewhere around South Bend, Indiana and Daddy, Mama and my brothers had all gone to that.  I got myself ready to go to my wedding but didn’t have any way to get there.  By chance, Bernice and Jay stopped by on their way to my wedding and they gave me a ride to my own wedding.  I left a note for my family that I was getting married at the Methodist Church in Hartford at 7:00 p.m., and to come if they could.

When we got to the church, and it was time for the wedding, my family still were not there.  I didn’t care and wanted to start without them, but everybody said we should wait for a little while and see if they didn’t get there.  I didn’t feel like we needed to wait for them at all since they hadn’t felt any necessity to skip the picnic on their daughter’s wedding day – even if the whole thing was a bit ‘iffy”.  But as usual, I didn’t voice my opinion about that.  Eventually my family came rushing in, still in their picnic clothes, and we were able to proceed with the festivities about 7:30. 

This little fiasco is generally considered to be quite an amusing and entertaining bit of our history – lots of laughs about this story over the years.  But I’m still mad about it and I don’t think it’s funny!