A Lady in Defiance
Dec 3, 20102 min
Back in the early 50’s, my grandma was a young divorcee with an 8 year old
daughter by her first marriage, and my granddaddy was a young widower.
When they met, my grandma had taken a bookkeeping class at a local college
and her teacher recommended her to my granddaddy, who had recently returned
home from the war and started a furniture business. He hired her and they
soon began dating after meeting at work.
However, Burlington was a pretty small town at the time, and in a year or
two my grandma heard a rumor that even though he was supposedly dating my
grandma exclusively, he was dating local schoolteacher on the weekends.
She found the rumor, and without even saying anything to my granddaddy, she
packed up to leave town. She had a sister who had moved out to Hawaii
several years before, so she packed up her whole home and life, and had all
her possessions shipped in crates to Hawaii. She and my aunt flew out the
following day.
My granddaddy figured out what had happened and managed to get hold of her
when she was in St. Louis for a night with an uncle of hers. He told her
he had broken up with the other woman and begged her to come back, but she
refused. She told him, “if you love me that much, you’ll have to come all
the way to Hawaii and get me!”
So my grandma and her young daughter flew all the way to Hawaii. The day
after their arrival, my granddaddy appeared on the doorstep of my grandma
sister’s home (where she and my aunt were staying). He told her that he
had been a complete idiot and proposed right there. They were married in a
quaint little church in Hawaii two days later, and then turned right around
back to North Carolina! In fact, they were married left Hawaii before the
crates of all their possessions had even arrived there!
My grandparents remained married the rest of their lives, and I really have
never seen two people more in love, but I’ve also never really heard a
story of a marriage so unique as this one! It’s also pretty scary to think
how close they came to losing each other forever, but whenever my
granddaddy told the story, he insisted that he would never have let that
happen. And up until his death a few years ago, my grandma would never
tell the story without jokingly reminding granddaddy how much he had goofed
up when he tried double-crossing her!
Mary Margaret Smith