December 31, 2001
CYBERCOLUMN:
December 29
___By Donna Van Cleve
___She had just turned 18 on Dec. 5. He celebrated his 21st birthday the previous month. They were standing in front of a justice of the peace in George West, Texas. The groom's brother stood beside him, and a good friend stood next to the bride. Both mothers were present, along with a stepfather and an aunt, and that was all who witnessed this union.
___The young man was in the Navy, and he looked so handsome in his dress blues facing his lovely bride, who wore a houndstooth check blazer and skirt. For months, the young man had been hitchhiking back and forth on the weekends from the naval base in Corpus Christi to Three Rivers to date this cutie from Simmons City. He liked to tell her he was risking his life just to come see her. She had moved to Live Oak County from West Texas her junior year in high school, when her mother remarried a local rancher several years after her first husband had passed away. High school is a tough age to have to move away from old friends and make new ones in a brand-new community, but she involved herself in the school choir and the volleyball and basketball teams and made new best friends.
DONNA VAN CLEVE
___During the summer, she took a part-time job at the confectionary next to the Rialto Theater downtown, and it didn't take her long to notice a good-looking guy working down the street at House Hardware. Mr. House used to take his coffee breaks at the confectionary and always said loudly before he left that he'd better get back to the store so somebody else could come down during his break. Unbeknownst to the young man, three different girls were chasing him at that time—one worked at the grocery store, another at the variety store, and the third was the girl at the confectionary. The one who caught him liked to say she just outran the other two.
___After the wedding, the young man had to borrow his uncle's long-nosed Chrysler to take his new bride on their weekend honeymoon. They drove over to the big city of Cotulla and spent their wedding night at the Cotulla Motel. He had to be back on duty Monday morning, so they rode the bus back to Corpus and lived their first week of marriage in a motel in Flour Bluff. Based on his salary, they were approved to live in a low-cost housing project called La Armada for awhile before they eventually moved into Navy housing.
___This story is the humble beginning of my parents' life together. Jim and Isla Casey were married 50 years ago, on Dec. 29, 1951. It is such a contrast to many of the marriages today, whose weddings cost thousands of dollars, and the newlyweds often start off in nicer homes than their parents retired in, along with new vehicles and furniture, stocked cabinets and closets, and a mountain of debt. And today one out of two of those marriages won't last.
___Maybe it was going through those tough times that bonded my parents together. Maybe they had no one else to lean on except themselves. What a legacy of love and commitment they have given their four children. We have never had to question our parents' love for each other or the fact that they would always be together. They truly did become one, even without a big church wedding and all the trappings that event entails to try to make those vows stick.
___My parents aren't perfect; they're just committed to each other. And they made another commitment early in their marriage to live for the Lord and become active members in a Baptist church in whatever town they lived. They ended up living in two states and six communities before ironically settling in the same town in which they spent their honeymoon night. Cotulla has been their home since 1967, except for a four-year stint in Harlingen before Dad retired. They have made lifelong friends in every town in which they have lived.
___Not too many years ago, when Mom and Dad were living in the Valley, they came for a weekend visit. We put them in the living room to sleep on our corner couch, which was two twin mattresses butted up against each other in an L shape. When I slipped in the living room the next morning, I noticed that one of the mattresses was empty. I walked over to find that Mom had crawled over beside Dad during the night to sleep beside him, no matter how narrow the bed was. That is so typical of them.
___But it still made me cry.
___Donna Van Cleve is director of the public library in Cotulla, a writer, wife, mother and member of First Baptist Church in Cotulla, where she is pianist.
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