You Can’t Kill Love

“You Can’t Kill Love”

Mom first met Dad at a ward party at Dry Falls, Washington, on a Sunday in July of 1951. A few days later, on July 24, Dad knocked on her family’s door and asked if she could go to a movie with him. Mom was only fifteen.

Grandpa hesitated, then said, “I better let you go or you’ll just cry all night.”

That was their first date.

Dad kept coming back. One time, when he showed up again to ask her out, Grandpa sicked their dog, Sarge, on him. It didn’t work. Dad wasn’t leaving.

He never formally “proposed.” They simply talked — constantly — about how much they wanted to be married. To them, it wasn’t a question of if. It was always when.

By March of 1952, they were spending evenings together at Dad’s parents’ home. One night they were lying on the couch reading the funny papers when grandma Belle told Grandpa they were too young to be getting so serious. Grandpa confronted Dad and told him he needed to stop seeing Mom.

That conversation exploded into a fight. Grandpa punched Dad in the jaw so hard it knocked him down a flight of stairs.

As Dad got up, he said, “You can’t kill love!”

Shortly after that fight, Mom and Dad walked together into his parents’ bedroom — while they were in bed — to tell them they “had” to get married. In those days, that statement carried only one meaning.

Mom was still in the 10th grade. Once the engagement was known, she was notified that she would not be allowed to stay in school. Before leaving she was called to the front of her English class and made to stand facing her classmates while her teacher said, “This is a prime example of what you should not do. I give this marriage six months.”

She ran out of school, climbed into Dad’s pickup, and sobbed. The ridicule from classmates was relentless.

Within a week, on March 22, 1952, they were married. Mom was 15. Dad was 16.

Mom always said Dad was late to his own wedding. Dad says he had to scramble to finish his chores and milk the cows before coming and admits that he may very well have been late.

When they returned from their honeymoon and pulled up to Dad’s parents’ home, Grandma Belle came out to the car and asked, “When’s the baby coming?”

Dad answered, “There is no baby.”

Grandpa was stunned and swore, saying, “I should have had her tested!” Dad was surprised to even know that was possible — and was grateful it was too late.

What began under criticism, suspicion, and more than a little scandal became a marriage that lasted a lifetime.

And it started with a knock on a door and a movie on July 24, 1951.