81st Wedding Anniversary

My parents, Billie and Crystal Barrow Waller, were married on October 24, 1942. Today is their 81st anniversary.

They married on a Saturday afternoon at the home of the Baptist minister in San Marcos. My father’s first cousin and my grandmother Barrow’s best friend, Carmen Barber Harper, served as witness.

On Monday, my mother, an office manager at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, turned in a change-of-name form. Major Joseph, whom she’d worked for for nearly two years, called her into his office and said, “Miss Barrow, what have you done?”

She told him she’d married.

“How long have you known this man?”

“Six years.”

“Oh.” He seemed relieved to know she hadn’t formed a wartime alliance with a GI after a two-day acquaintance. “Where is your husband?”

He was at the house she shared with her mother and her younger sisters. In a week he would be rejoining his unit in Southern California.

“Miss Barrow, go home and stay there.”

She stayed there until my father’s leave was over.

 

When my father arrived in California, he found his unit had already shipped out. He rode a flatcar, guarding tanks, to Hershey, Pennsylvania, where he was stationed until he left for England, Scotland, England, France, Belgium, Germany, and again France.

My mother stayed in San Antonio, working at Fort Sam Houston. When her military employers moved to Dallas, she and her mother and sisters moved there.

My father returned home from service on October 23, 1945, one day before their third anniheversary. Six months later, my mother resigned her job and they moved to my dad’s home town of Fentress.

I was born on their ninth anniversary.