1940

Sunday Sermonette (sorta)

Tucson Daily Star, Sunday, December 29, 1940, p. 13

This isn’t exactly a Sunday Sermonette, but I want to write about this event today. I mean, it happened in a church, so it kind of counts. On Saturday, December 28, 1940, my parents were married in Tucson, Arizona. This article from the society page of the Arizona Daily Star provides all of the details about the 8:00 pm wedding at the First Christian Church in Tucson. I don’t recognize the names of the women who were my mother’s attendants, but I do recognize the names of my father’s groomsmen. The best man was Lloyd Aulick, whose name I recognize as one of the men my mother dated before she settled on Lloyd Arnold. My mom told me at one point that her parents were happy that she had chosen the “right” Lloyd. The ushers were my mother’s 11-year-old brother, T.C. Workman, and my father’s 12-year-old brother, LeRoy “Lee” Arnold. My mother’s younger sister, Mary, told me many years later that my mom asked her to be a junior bridesmaid, but Mary turned her down because she didn’t want to wear a fancy dress. Mary said that she regretted turning down this opportunity, but she was a kid and thought she knew what she wanted.

Left-Right: Susie and Tom Workman, my parents Violet Workman and Lloyd Arnold, and Orpha and John Arnold

The article notes that the vocal selections for the wedding were “I Love You Truly” and “At Dawning” – both sung by Miss Norma White. Here are two versions of these songs.

I know what happened over the next several months and years.

My parents spent their honeymoon in Pasadena, California, where they planned to attend the Rose Bowl Parade. But the way they told the story, my father forgot to make hotel reservations, so they spent the night in their car.

When they returned to Tucson, my mother returned to her job at the office of the Dean of Women at the University of Arizona; she had been enrolled there through the spring of 1940, but when they began to plan their wedding, she didn’t return to college. My father was draft-deferred because of a lung ailment and was working as a telephone operator with the VA hospital in Tucson.

By 1943, they had relocated to Arlington, Virginia, where he continued to work with the VA. In February of 1944, my father’s draft deferment expired, and he became eligible for the draft. My older brother Ken was born in March of 1944, and my father was drafted in April. In May, my grandmother (my mother’s mother) came to Arlington to help with the baby, and by the end of May, they had returned to Tucson while my father went off to serve in the Navy.

In August of 1944, my grandmother died suddenly as a result of complications of surgery, and my mother was left to be the lady of the house to her father, her two grieving younger siblings, and an infant.

Fast forward 40 years.

As my siblings and I grew up and moved away, it became our holiday tradition to be at my parents’ house (by this point, they had moved to Madison, Virginia) on December 28 for a joint Christmas/anniversary celebration. It was a perfect compromise as far as I was concerned. We could all stay at home with our kids and any other nearby relatives, and then make our way to Madison for their anniversary. We did the presents-under-the-tree thing and went out to dinner to celebrate their anniversary. On their 50th anniversary my siblings and I (and assorted family members) wrote and performed a play for their party. At one point a version of this play was available within the family, but (thankfully) it seems to have disappeared.

After my father died, those celebrations dwindled – within a few years, my sister and her husband had moved in with my mother, and, although we still visited over the holidays, the significance of December 28 decreased.

But here’s to Mom and Dad and December 28. Love you and miss you.