65th Wedding Anniversary

Yesterday was a special day. If my late wife, Shirley, were still alive, on August 27th we would have celebrated our 65th wedding anniversary. We were married on Aug. 27, 1955, in the Brighton Heights Reformed Church, St. George, Staten Island, NY. That was an exciting time in other ways also. Hurricane Diane had roared through the Northeast the previous week - causing severe flooding in Pennsylvania especially. It took out all the bridges between Pennsylvania and Northern New Jersey -bridges the bus used that I regularly took from Danville, PA (where I was involved in clinical training for seminarians at the Danville State Mental Hospital) to New York City. Thus for this last trip of the summer, the bus had to go from Scranton, PA down to Philadelphia to get across the Susquahanna River, making for a much longer trip. My father was  the officiating minister at our wedding. Little did we know then that a year later, he would be diagnosed with a bi-lateral frontal lobe brain tumor, a cancer that took his life eight months later.  Shirley died on May 24, 1998, and I am blessed to have been married to Ellen for 15 years. But I still honor Shirley's memory, and our 42+ years of marriage. And today I remember that relationship with gratitude. 

 

The receiving line after our wedding: l. to r., my mother, Olga Crockett; my father, Barney Crockett; Shirley; me; Jane Pollock, Shirley's Maid of Honor. Place: the church hall at Brighton Heights Church.

The Harris' front lawn: l. to r., Shirley's Aunt Grace (Grace Langley Hall, her mother's twin sister); her mother (Florence Langley Harris); Shirley; me; my mother; my mother's sister, Julia Winter.