I met Louie dancing at that one thing that we danced at. I didn’t like him at all. I thought he was a… he was eleven and I was nine.

I thought he was gross, because he used to sing, “The old gray mare she (Dorothy makes a raspberry sound) on the boulevard, (raspberry sound) on the boulevard, (sound) on the boulevard.” And I thought, “OH!” And his mother would laugh, and I thought, “Oh, that’s just gross!” (Laughs.)

Anyway, we then when he was… we had a church group. That was big in those days. The churches—you didn’t have to go to that church—but there was a big church group and usually it was a YMCA leader who led it. And that let us be really social. We went to dances, we went to skating rinks, and we went as groups. And that was so nice. And Louie was in that group and then we started dating when I was fourteen and he was sixteen.

I got married when I was nineteen, and he was turned twenty-one just the day before. We were supposed to get married the day before, and he got called into service.

And then, well, and I followed him. I couldn’t follow him immediately. I went down with him. I took him down to the train station, the depot in LA, and all of our California guys were there who had been college deferred guys. They were getting to them now. So they were all there in their California clothes and off they were shipped to Nebraska. And then I followed at spring break with a friend of mine who was married already. She and her husband were a little older than we were, a couple years, three years, older than we were in college. And I was allowed to go because she was my chaperone. You know, there were things like that in those days.

So I followed him to Nebraska. And we were there for that week. And while we were there—Louie and I were kind of walking around when he got off in the evening—and the hotel clerk said, “Why don’t you two get married.” And so Louie said, “Why don’t we?” Because we were supposed to be married the day when he went into the service.

The wedding was set. Dresses, cake baked, everything, and it had to be postponed. So we were there in Virginia—I mean, in wherever we were—Nebraska. And he looked at me, I looked at him, and he says, “Why don’t we?” So we called his mom, and his mom brought my dress and a dress for a gal—that other gal that we know—they stood with us. And her husband was in Louie’s contingent there. And we got married there in Wayne, Nebraska. And we had one night together. There was one hotel in town. So all the prostitutes were in certain… you saw the guys standing in line outside. (Laughs.) Louie’s mom and aunt were down at the end of the hall and we were… and about nine o’clock knocking on the door and Louie answered and he says, “Zeyen?” “Yes, sir.” He said, “Report back immediately.” So Louie came back in, got his shoes, and got ready to go. Knock on the door, and the guy said, “Zeyen?” “Yes sir.” He said—that was a corporal, you know—“Yes sir.” Louie saluted. He saluted anything that moved in those days in a uniform. And he said, “You just got married.” And Louie said, “Yes.” And he said, “We didn’t find you, but you be there at seven tomorrow morning.” (Laughs.)

So he gave us our first night together. The first night together we were given by the Army. By one soldier, anyway. One understanding corporal who was probably twenty-two and who Louie saluted. So that was neat. So then we didn’t see each other for a while.

No, he was right there in the college training detachment. They had to—the reason they were called back was because spinal meningitis has broken out and his roommate died. And he had the opportunity to take the body home, back to California, and he turned it down. He said, “I’m sorry, but I just didn’t want to, not even if it meant I could see you for an hour.”