Don & Joyce // Frazier Park Couple’s Session

Last week, I had the honor of photographing my own grandparents (for the second time) down in Frazier Park, California. Earlier that day, I sat down with my Grammy and asked her some questions and her and Gramps’ relationship. Here is the conversation that we had…

How did you and Gramps meet?
Grammy: On a blind date on October 22nd, 1960. Both of us were 20 years old.

What was that first date like?
Grammy: I had gone to work at the phone office in Salem and I trained with a girl named Sandy, and she and I became friends. She kept telling me about this friend of hers that she wanted me to go out with, but he was in the Army and was stationed in Germany. He was due to come back in June or something like that, but his dad passed away, so we didn’t get a chance to meet when he came back that time. Then when he came back in October, Sandy set it up. I honestly don’t remember [much of that first date]…
Gramps: I remember you sitting there and me sitting there and that’s about it!
Grammy: I was going to say, both of us were very bashful and didn’t do a lot of talking. But then we started talking on the phone, and we would call each other back and forth and I don’t even remember after that what was the next date or what did we do, all of that 7 weeks was kind of a blur.

When did you know you wanted to marry each other?
Grammy: I don’t know…in 7 weeks it evolved from meeting each other into, we’re getting married. I’m not sure, again, it was just kind of a blur. A few things stand out [like] the rings. Before he left, we chose our rings and put them on layaway because we had to wait for money from the military when he got his reenlistment bonus to pay for the rings. A place in Salem was going out of business, so we got the rings for half price, so we put them on layaway. As soon as he got the money he sent it up to me, and I went got the rings, and I started wearing my engagement ring. My poor dad, he was so upset about that, because Don was supposed to put the ring on my finger. And I kept saying, “Dad, when he gets back, we are getting married within a couple days. I would like to at least wear the ring for a week.” So I went ahead and put the ring on and wore it. But we did pick them out together.

How soon after meeting each other did you get married?
Grammy: On Thanksgiving, we went to Bea & Forrest’s, and that’s when we announced that we were engaged and going to get married. Then Gramps left right after Thanksgiving, to go to Texas to do some military stuff that he had to do. He got back the day of a bridal shower that was held at Glen & Gloria Thurston’s. So he came down and was going to stay with my dad, but he said he would drive me out there [to the shower]. Then on the way was when we had the wreck and totaled the Sprite. And then it was just trying to get things ready and we got married on the 15th [of December]…with bruises all over me!

Did Gramps propose?
Grammy: You know it kind of evolved, I don’t even remember…
Gramps: I just think we decided we were going to get married!
Grammy: There was no formal proposal, we just started talking about getting married, then he knew he was leaving and didn’t know what the situation was going to be or when he’d be back. So we decided let’s just get married!

What was your wedding like?
Grammy: We were just going to get married at home because I didn’t really have time to plan anything, and Gloria Thurston and some of the other ladies from the church said, “don’t worry about it, we’ll do everything. You just come to your wedding.” Well, of course there were things to do…my mom made my dress, Bea was my Matron of Honor and she made her dress. We actually used the same type of material and maybe even the same pattern, but hers was a light green and mine was white. Gramps wore his uniform, and his uncle John was the Best Man, and he wore his uniform cause he was Army. We got married in the old Scio Baptist Church building.
Gramps: When I left the first time, before we got married and went back to base to El Paso, when I got there, I told them I had to go back cause I was gonna get married. They said “you can’t go on leave again, you just came off of leave” and I said “watch me.” And they knew me, so they gave me leave.

Do you remember anything else specific about the wedding?
Grammy: You know, it’s more thinking about the pictures that were taken. Seriously! It really is. After 60 years it’s hard to really remember…again, I realize because ours was such a whirlwind thing, plus we were getting ready to leave and I was leaving for who knows how long on a permanent basis, so there was so much going on that yeah, it was just this blur. The wedding went very well, I can still remember, again from pictures, I can remember Lonny and Rusty and Patty and the little kids running around.

Tell me about your honeymoon.
Grammy: Okay so again, ours was very different. We were going to be leaving, and we did not know when we’d see family again. Because back then, we knew we’d be pretty close financially that we wouldn’t be able to come up, and my parents couldn’t afford to be coming down, cause we were going to Texas. So, we spent our first night in a motel in Salem, and then we stayed with either my family or his family…so that was the 15th, we left on the day after Christmas, so during that time, we just stayed with each family to try and spend as much time with them as we could. And then to top it off, I came down with strep throat. The Scio Baptist cantata was on a Sunday night, and we had gone up that day to see his uncle and aunt in Portland, and we came back and I kept thinking, “getting married is really hard on a person…I really feel lousy!” We went to the cantata, we came back to my folks and my mom looked and me and she said “are you okay?” And I said “well, I feel kind of bad”. I had a temperature of like 104! I went to the doctor I think the next day, and I had strep throat. And I was a telephone operator! I was supposed to work, because I had only worked there since like May, so I was low on the [totem pole] and the people with seniority were supposed to get the day off. I couldn’t even talk, so my mom called them and explained the situation. Well, I’m sure they were thinking oh yeah sure she just got married and she’s leaving, sure she can’t come to work. But I wanted to go to work because we needed the money, but I couldn’t! So that’s how we started the marriage. We were married one day and I think this was just a day or two later when I came down with the strep throat. So between the car wreck and the strep throat, we had an interesting start.

We left on the 26th, and since we had wrecked the car, we ended up buying a Buick which was bigger, which was a good thing since all our earthly belongings were in this car, stuffed to the…well, it wasn’t stuffed too much because my mom did go with us. And the reason is, her mom had been really sick and she lived in Hermosa Beach, California, and she wanted very much to go down there, and they just couldn’t afford it. So Gramps and I said “Mom, why don’t you just ride down with us, and then it won’t be so expensive one way”. It was decided that’s what she would do. We kidded all the time about her going on our honeymoon with us. We came down here and saw my grandmother and my uncle, who died on January 1st, so I was very glad I got to see him one more time. I got to see my brother Clayton…I had seen him very few times in my life so that was special. And then we went on to Texas, and when we were out in the desert driving along, I looked at him [Gramps] and I thought “oh my gosh, what have I done, this guy could be an ax murderer”. We got to El Paso on January 1st [1961]. So like I said, our start in married life was a little bit different than most people.

What are some memories from your early-married years?
Grammy: We go down there, with very little money, first of all, and I’m not even sure how we found this place, but we ended up living in a little apartment over a garage. So that was our first place.
Gramps: And the kitchen you had to back out of before somebody else…
Grammy: Oh my gosh the kitchen looked like it had one time been a closet. It had miniature everything, it had a little tiny cupboard, and just room for you to walk in there. It honestly looked like a closet! It [the apartment] had a huge living room and huge bedroom, but the kitchen was so tiny. I got pregnant right away, so a lot of my memories are more of that.

Oh cooking! You know, I didn’t cook, I didn’t know how to cook. I could make tuna casserole, I could make a hamburger, I could put a hotdog sandwich together. Honestly, I think our first meal I fixed hot dogs and sauerkraut. That was probably one of the hardest things about our start in married life was I couldn’t cook! I also only ate 3 or 4 things because I was very touchy, I could get an upset stomach very easily. Well, I found out that was a lot because I was spoiled and so it was psychological. I had to fix things for him, and so as I did that, I started developing tastes for certain things.

So the next house we lived in, we lived about 3/4ths of the way up the hill, and there weren’t a lot of houses past us. We got this little tiny, tiny house, it was pink stucco, I remember that. There was an elderly lady that lived next door and we used to play canasta with her. Cause we didn’t even have a car! We couldn’t afford to do anything, so our big thing was playing canasta with our neighbor.
Gramps: I can’t even remember how I got to work!
Grammy: You hitch-hiked!
Gramps: Oh yeah, that’s right.
Grammy: He worked in White Sands, we lived in El Paso, and it’s what, 50 miles? So that was always an adventure.
Gramps: There were buses that ran…
Grammy: But we couldn’t afford the buses so he had to hitch-hike.
Grammy: So we lived in several different houses, and then where we lived when your dad was born…we lived in this subdivision at Fort Bliss in El Paso. It was actually houses that should’ve been demolished, but they left them up so we could use them. It was for E-4s and below. It was actually a wonderful experience, everyone was really close, we had block parties all the time, everybody shared everything, we took care of each other’s kids, we helped each other out. So really, it was a fun experience…it was neat.

Shopping was interesting because we would walk a couple miles to the commissary pushing Arden [my uncle], and then that’s the one time we’d hire a taxi to bring us home because we had groceries. And we usually only went once a month and so we had to get a lot of groceries. I look back and I think, how did I ever survive? I was pregnant, and I had this child who was [about a year old] cause he was one and a half when Eric was born. Arden was a big, chunky kid…I had to walk quite a ways to get to a bus stop then get on the bus and go to William Beaumont [Hospital]. But when I got off, there was no bus service within. We’re talking about a huge base, where you might have to walk a half mile or mile to get to one of the clinics. There was no transportation! So there I am with this child, trying to either let him toddle along beside me or most of the time I was carrying him, me pregnant. Oh my, it was a rough time.

I almost had a nervous breakdown when your dad was about 3 months old. I don’t remember a lot of his childhood, because I was out of it. He survived though! I had no one to help me…and as a matter of fact, at 23, I had 5 or 6 women who were coming to me and telling me all their problems, and I was supposed to tell them what they were supposed to do. On top of that, their husbands were coming to me to find out what they should do to help the marriage. That’s why I almost had a nervous breakdown…I not only had two babies to take care of, I had a husband who wasn’t home half the time, and then all these people coming to me all the time, so anyway it was interesting. And to top it all off, because money was so short (we still didn’t have a car) I was trying to take care of kids, so I had little kids in and out of my home to take care of. So it was interesting.

How do you and Gramps get through difficult times?
Grammy: I feel like my whole life has consisted of just praying a lot. Cause we’ve gone through some rough patches, and it’s always just been prayer is what has gotten me through, and I think him too.
Gramps: Yup.

What do you think is the secret to a happy marriage?
Gramps: Compromise is a lot [of it].
Grammy: Yeah, I think that’s probably it. That one is hard for me to answer too, I don’t really know. Again I think so much evolves around faith and prayer and that’s the most important thing.

What is your definition of love?
Grammy: That you care for someone and that they come first in your life. I mean you can’t put everyone that you love first, but in the context of married love, you have to pretty well put them first, and you have to meet them halfway, and you have to try to make them happy.

What advice would you give to your younger married self?
Grammy: To wait longer and not get married so fast! I didn’t have a clue what I was getting into. And to wait on spiritual matters, because Gramps wasn’t a Christian when we got married, and that certainly isn’t a step I’d want to take again.

What advice would you give to all your married grandchildren?
Gramps: Don’t forget to say ‘I’m sorry’ even if you don’t feel that you made the mistake. It’s not always being right, sometimes you have to go the extra ten feet.
Grammy: Of course the main thing is putting Christ first and putting each other first over other people and things.