Platinum

By pure happenstance of the calendar I always remembered my parents’ anniversary; it is November 29^th, the day after my birthday. In some years Thanksgiving, my birthday, and their anniversary fall three days in a row. That tends to impress itself on a child’s memory. I remember it still. So, my birthday yesterday immediately made me think of their anniversary today, and I realized that this one would be their 70^th. Somehow that seems improbable, though doubtless not as improbable as it would seem to them were they here to contemplate it. My dad died in 2000 and my mom in 2001.

The note on back says
"age 15 and 17"

Needless to say, it was a different world in 1947. My mom Robina was 19 and my dad Richard (almost always Dick) was 21. Today we actively and loudly discourage people that young from getting married, but back then nearly half of all marriages were among women and men those ages or younger. They were on the tail end of the GI Generation, but still a part of it. As a matter of definition, the GI Generation comprises those old enough to have served in WW2 (even if in fact they didn’t) but too young also to have served in WW1 or for it to have been their formative experience: i.e. the birth years 1905 to 1928. (The GIs were preceded by the so-called Lost Generation [roughly 1884 to 1904] and followed by the so-called Silent Generation [1929-1945].) My father was born in 1926 and my mother in 1928. They met in Morristown High School. During the war my dad served in the USMS, aka Merchant Marine; he and my mom continued to date whenever his ship was in a nearby port. He was discharged in ’46 and they married a year later. My sister was born the day before North Korea invaded the South in 1950, which fortuitously gave my dad an exemption from being recalled to military service.

There are always exceptions to broad generalizations, of course, but the GI Gens tended to be flawed in characteristic ways that their kids (Boomers) were all too eager to point out to them. Whatever their flaws, however, they also commonly had virtues that are sadly uncommon today, such as the blending of stern values with a ready willingness to give second chances. An example: my dad was a builder, and one time in the ‘60s some neighborhood teens slashed tires on construction vehicles on his job site. The damage was $800, which was a substantial sum at the time. A neighbor had seen the boys and reported their names to my dad. Today, teens vandalizing a job site this way almost certainly would be reported to the police in “by-the-book” fashion. Instead, my dad called their fathers. He didn’t want the kids’ parents to pay for the tires; he wanted the boys to pay for them from summer jobs. They did, too, and their parents backed my dad up. No police ever heard a word about it. My dad shook hands with each of the boys when the debt was paid off, and he truly regarded the matter as closed. It is so hard to imagine this happening today; almost certainly there would be cops called, there would be lawyers hired, and there would be parents vociferously defending their teens regardless of what they thought the truth might be.

My mom, like my dad, was hardworking, versatile, and competent without intending any social statement by it. She worked as an executive secretary (the term was not yet verboten) on Wall Street in the ‘40s, was a stay-at-home mom in the 50s, and opened her own real estate brokerage in the ‘60s. A bubbly persona often led people to underestimate her, which always was a mistake. Despite his tough façade, my dad was a soft touch, while my mom was anything but.

The combination worked well throughout their marriage as a small incident illustrates. In 1998 it was their habit to have breakfast at the nearby Chester Diner. One morning they were chatting away in their usual fashion when a couple in a neighboring booth got their attention. “Excuse me,” said the woman in the booth, “but are you two married?” “51 years,” my mom answered. “Really? We ran out of things to say to each other 30 years ago,” was the reply. They never did run out of things to say.

The stone chapel off of Bernardsville-Mendham Road where the wedding took place in 1947 still exists. However, back then it was an unassuming little structure in the middle of the woods in a municipality not known for being upscale. Today it is a secondary building on a private 9-acre estate with a mansion built in 2002. The property happens to be on the market at this time, but at a price of $4,495,000 and with annual property taxes of over $83,000 I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. It’s a tad out of my range.