Wednesday, April 17, marks 60 years since Ken and I promised “to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish until death us do part.” That optimistic young pair didn’t realize how our life together would mirror those vows.
The two of us will spend the evening at the Circa 21 dinner theater in Rock Island seeing the play, Grumpy Old Men. Afterward we will stay overnight in a motel. On Sunday, April 21, our kids and grandkids will meet us for brunch at The Hoffman House in a combined celebration of our anniversary and Easter.
Ken and I courted for seven years before we married, including his four-year hitch in the Navy. Looking back, I see a lot of ‘what ifs’ during that time. What if sixteen-year-old Kenny had been to shy to ask me to ride on the Ferris wheel while I walked around Davis Days summer festival with my boyfriend, Ronnie, July 18, 1952? What if I’d said no? What if I ‘d just said good-bye when he started his four-year enlistment in the Navy in ’54 instead of promising to wait for him? What if he’d found someone else during his travels? What if he’d been aboard that ill-fated plane that crashed in the Grand Canyon in ’56 instead of letting another sailor use his ticket while he took a later flight? What if one of my mother’s worries had come true and I succumbed to either the life-threatening appendicitis infection when I was fifteen or TB when I was nineteen? I firmly believe we were meant to be together.
‘What ifs’ have shaped your life?