On an airplane, one of those old DC-3s (this was back in 1959). My dad was 27 and my mom was 20 and very attractive. She had just won her airline’s “Miss Aviation” award, essentially a beauty pageant, complete with bathing suit picture on the cover of her city’s Sunday Times magazine in the newspaper. At that age my dad was established and ready to settle down.
They were on the same flight and my mom was working. My dad had his eyes set on her. The flight got diverted because of a storm, and between the flight, ensuing delays, and the next leg my dad got her contact info. He began dating after he got passed her tough Russian father and, as they say, the rest is history.
I have some pictures of my mom around here somewhere. She was quite attractive.
They worked at the same pace. She (30) was teaching the kids of the officers on a military base in France, while he (22) was teaching French to the GIs.
She said later that if she’d known how young he was, she’d never have dated him.
They’d known each other essentially from childhood – respective offspring in families with several kids, which families lived a few miles from each other and had been in friendly contact “since forever”. They were, like the other offspring of the families, “just pals” until their mid / early twenties, latish in World War II. During Dad’s home leaves (he was in the British Merchant Navy, she in a civilian job at home), things progressed to romance. They waited till the war was over – married in 1946. The others in the “crowd” reckoned it at the time, a freakish wartime misalliance; but they were seemingly happy enough for twelve years, till Dad’s sudden and unexpected death, aged 41.
I didn’t know, so I asked Mom yesterday because of this thread. (Dad’s been out of the picture for about 40 years).
She said they both worked at Bendix, an airplane parts manufacturer. She was one of many girls assembling parts, and he was the guy with the clipboard who would come around and check their speed and quotas. I said, “It seems weird that you would have a job like that”, because I’ve always thought of Mom as a girly-girl. She said, “Oh no, I loved it! I had my own tool box and soldering iron and everything.”
Anyway, the girls had been discussing whether or not the young man with the clipboard was married, and when he came around that day, one of the bold ones asked him flat out. He blushed and stammered and admitted that he wasn’t, and the questioner hollered over to Mom, “No, Cathy, he’s not married!”, which embarrassed the hell out of her. I imagine things went a lot easier after that.
My curiosity was piqued, so I messaged my lil brother last night, asking if he knew. He replied that of course he knew, and it disgusted him that I did not. Conversation over. I guess it’s a touchy point for him, we generally get along very well.
I found the old pics of my mom from 1959 (from post #61). 4 pics are from the newspaper article including magazine cover bathing suit shot, and the 5th pic is my parents’ wedding photo.
Pic #3 is when she was crowned “Miss Aviation 1959” for the airlines, with trophy in hand.
I think she was quite attractive back then, but I get a little squicked out when talking that way about her. She’s MY MOTHER, fer criminy sakes. But what do you people think?
My parents grew up in the same neighborhood in Baltimore and they kind of ‘always’ knew each other. They dated around high school age(different schools, though - Dad public & Mom Catholic) and were married from 1950, about a year after graduation, until my mother died in '87.
I mentioned this to my mother and she corrected me about one important fact. My dad didn’t quit hairdressing because he liked doing his own thing. He quit because he was a terrible hairdresser, and our family would have lived in a cardboard box if we depended on his hairdressing income.
My mom swears up and down it was a church hay-rack ride. I don’t believe it; neither of them grew up in families that made church a priority. Both families were culturally Christian, but neither was church-going.
My dad was in a military college and my mother was studying nursing. As the military college was 100% male and nursing was 99%+ female there were several dances arranged between the two schools. A lot of the officers from that school are married to nurses.
Mom’s guardian moved her family to Dad’s hometown in '39 or so. Couple of years later, the teenager took an after school job as a librarian’s assistant and Dad started hanging around the library.
Dad enlisted in the Navy in early '42 and asked Mom to wait for him, which she did. They got married while Dad was studying for his chemical engineering degree on the GI Bill; their wedding photo isn’t actually from their wedding but rather at a professional’s studio a few days later.
My parents were 12 when they met, school sweethearts.
Had me at 16.
My dad was already a tear away and was in/out of my life until he was stabbed and died when I was 19 and he was 36. It was horrific and only now at 42 I’ve come to terms with it.
My mum was/is a major depressive, probably bipolar/personality disorder, narcissist. Never diagnosed as…well she’s a narcissist and thinks there’s nothing wrong with her.
I don’t know the exact circumstances, but through my mother’s brothers, who were pals of my father, one of them playing for the same football team. My mother was engaged when she met my father (a fact she only told me about a few years ago), and I guess that to cancel that engagement was a minor family scandal (it was in the sixties). But it was the best for all, especially me, who wouldn’t post here and now if it hadn’t happened :). My parents have been married for 53 years.
My father’s mother was a patient at a hospital where my mother worked as a nurse. He saw my mother and tried to charm her into going out with him. Fortunately, my grandmother was a patient long enough that my father finally asked my mother on a night she had nothing better to do.
