When Things Work Out—or don’t
Winter 1974……
Some couple friends came over the other night to celebrate our anniversary with us. They were asking questions about how we met, where that was and about our early years of marriage. Jeannie’s family and mine actually knew each other when we were in school at Celia Clinton Elementary in Tulsa. Our brothers were in Cub Scouts together. Her family moved later on to the 'ritzy' side of town...where she graduated from Edison High School…a rival of our Will Rogers High. When Jeannie was in High School her family changed churches and joined the one we'd been a part of forever…Central Nazarene. I was off to Stillwater in college by then. We dated some my junior year but didn't get serious until my senior year when I gave her a 'promise ring' on her front porch Valentine's Day of 1971. Because I had lottery number that had been drafted in 1970...I was not going to wait for the draft notice and decided to join the Navy on May 11 and was put in inactive Naval Reserve while waiting for my report date. Having had some experience with undependable leave times—her brother Larry was in the Navy at the time--the decision was made to move up the wedding to June 5 since I was to report in August.
Days before the wedding the Navy wrote the first of several letters putting off my report date until later in the year. I was headed for Officer's Candidate School to become a supply officer and since the Viet Nam war was winding down, fewer officers were needed. We went full steam ahead with the wedding but the plans we’d made had all been done with the August report date in mind. We rented an apartment near Tulsa University—easy since we were going to be there just for the summer so we had to move come August. By that time the Navy delayed my report date again. The only job I could find was a 'pre-opener' at McDonalds hamburgers since I was headed to the Navy. I went in at 5 AM (this was before they served breakfast) and cleaned the whole place to open at eleven. We had one car so we both got up, drove to her parent’s house not far from McDonalds, she went back to sleep and I headed to work. Her dad then took her to her job. That was the routine our first six months.
Our engagement photo for the Tulsa paper
With the third change of orders the Navy sent late October they offered a discharge. I could see the draft was going slower than the previous year so I applied for seminary in Fort Worth and requested the discharge. One weekend in November the discharge papers came on Friday and on Saturday the acceptance letter arrived from Southwestern. On a very cold day in early January 1972 we became Texans. We lived in seminary housing which was old, triplexes that were sided with the classic brittle shingles that when a fly ball hit, they cracked, revealing the tar-paper underneath...and there had been several ‘fly balls'. They were small apartments but we were grateful in that our rent was a whopping $67.50 a month. All our furniture was hand-me-downs from relatives and friends. Mom and dad had a ‘modern’ three piece sectional couch...I’d hated it as a kid...and then hated it as an adult...but it was a place to sit down. It had no back support because the back was only about a foot high...which caught me mid-back. It fit a toddler but then beggars can't be choosers. The sectional literally filled the living room. When we had company the room was FULL, we were on top of one another. Our kitchen table was a card table so we were majorly thankful when my aunt and uncle gave us their old kitchen dinette set…the formica top and the metal around the edges. Kinda wish we still had that set.
Those were fun days. We had next to nothing but all the other seminary students were in the same boat. We'd all be arriving home from work around the same time each evening walking in our back doors checking with each other about what they had to eat. Pot lucks were frequent as we'd pool what we had.
Come the summer of 1973 I'd completed my seminary work and headed to the University Of Texas at Arlington (the REAL UT--although down in Texas the REAL UT is in Austin). Later I was a confused puppy the first few weeks in Tennessee with all the UT talk...these Tennessee people were confused as well. We moved to Hurst—part of HEB/Hurst-Euless-Bedford—in the Northeast corner of Fort Worth. Our rent sky-rocketed to $160 a month. But the move meant I was closer to Arlington to make the daily trip. I also was doing youth work at a church in Hurst. Jeannie was still working full-time in Fort Worth.
Our apartment was across the street from the landing field of Bell Helicopter, a Textron company supplying helicopters for the military overseas. Jeannie decided to walk across and apply for a job. She was hired right away. On the following Friday we were at Tony and Marilyn's house eating banana splits to celebrate. The Brescias (and the Blinds) were our best friends while in Texas—more like family. He was from a Italian family in Seekonk, Massachusetts and huggy, touchy, all over you. Marilyn was from Enid Oklahoma—not far from where both Jeannie and I were born in Oklahoma...Bartlesville and Cushing respectively. We were together all the time, so much so that the preacher pulled me aside on one occasion and to warn that the closeness of our friendship lent itself to such things as 'wife-swapping' implying we should back away. I was stunned and offended. Both couples remain our friends to this day…unlike the preacher. Never did any swapping.
Jeannie's never enjoyed ice cream. We also knew she was late on her period but we weren't prepared in the least for where that weekend went. In the night early Saturday morning she’d gotten up to go to the bathroom with an upset stomach. I was awakened by a crash, the rattle of the glass shower doors and a spoon she'd used for medicine dancing on the tile floor. I bolted into the bathroom to find her wedged head first between the commode and the tub. Lifting her out as she was coming to she had a huge 'goose egg' on her forehead. We got her back to bed and called her doctor who said to bring her in first thing. Having grown up with all boys I was dumb as dirt about pregnancy, periods and such. Is THIS what pregnant women do? She passed out one more time before we got her to his office around 8 o'clock. He took one look at her and told me to get her immediately to the emergency room. We drove directly there but she wanted me to run to the apartment and get her a few things. I barely made it back before she was rushed to surgery hemorrhaging from a tubal pregnancy. It was ominous at that point. I called her mom who flew on a plane for the first time from Tulsa to DFW. Recovery was projected to be a few weeks and we feared that the new job was in jeopardy since she’d only been there a week. On Monday morning I called her supervisor who assured me that the job would be there whenever she was healthy enough to return. Because she was our primary bread winner it was looking like I'd have to quit school….meaning I'd just have to start completely over the next fall. I fantasized that maybe the church...or youth group...would do something to help. But nothing materialized. She'd had some vacation pay from the previous job that we'd stuck in savings but it wouldn't be enough to make it for the 5-6 weeks they were predicting for recovery.
On the Sunday a week later after we'd got home from the hospital we had just finished lunch when the doorbell rang. I went to the door and a woman I didn’t know said that she worked in the section where Jeannie had gone to work at Bell. She said they'd been praying for us and handed me an envelope saying 'this is for you both'. I thanked her taking the envelope to the table where we opened it to find $50-60 dollars! Every Sunday until she went back to work someone from the section came by with an envelope of money. I didn't have to quit graduate school and Jeannie recovered a week or two sooner than expected. It was our first lesson in the provision of God and how it works. I was rather peeved that our church did nothing..."wow, so much for the body of Christ!". But the kingdom of God...the ultimate church DID come through. The people at Bell turned out to be wonderful people, believers as well…so wonderful that we even vacationed with them in July when the plant shut down for two weeks. You work with people all year...and then go on vacation together? Yes.
A view of the San Juan Mountains near Ouray from a jeep trail
Rusty, one of her co-workers, had a place in Ouray, Colorado where we went jeep riding in the back country for the better part of two weeks. We have unbelievable memories coming over Blackbear Pass down into Telluride. We drove our two door 69 Mustang grande loaded with our camping gear to Colorado. We camped the whole time, Rusty came by early each morning to pick us up in his Wrangler. Because there were six of us, he’d dropped the tailgate and bolted our seat on top of it to the wheel wells. At times when he jockeyed the jeep around switchbacks our seat hung out over the edge. There were likely grip marks in the metal where I’d held on so tightly during those moments. We took in some of the grandest scenery I’ve seen in America. We went back to Ouray a few years ago and went jeep riding again for two days. Even though it was early July Blackbear Pass was still closed from winter snows.
The experience during her surgery taught us to be careful where we look for help…to watch out about our expectations. We would have never dreamed help would come from a group of people we'd only known a week. We were barely beyond 'strangers' to them yet they were so gracious—and generous. Lesson learned: .back off my own scheming and let God and good people happen. It was the first of several occasions in our lives when God has come through in unexpected ways—through good people.
It was an early lesson in control and surrender for two twenty-somethings.