1953 we graduated and that was a good year, and I was engaged at the time.   Mel was in the service and he was stationed out in California in the Army.   He never left the States because we found out he was a pretty good cook and they sent him to Cook and Bakers School.   He went out on the Nevada flats there and had to cook for all the guys.

My sister and I went to church because we had what we called Luther League.  We belonged to the Lutheran Church so we had Luther League Sunday night.

It was Palm Sunday night and we had gone to our meeting.   My sister and I were walking home, and here are these young men in a car and go by and whistle and everything and oh my!

We didn’t think too much about them but we kept on going.   They kept going down the street and pulled in to an alley.   We got to talking and one thing led to another and that was how we met and the very first thing that Mel said was, “I’d like to meet your mother!”

I thought…Well, that I guess was the best thing because he was top priority from then on.   My mother and my dad just took right to him and boy that was it.   So, that’s how we met.

Yeah, we had talked for a while and he wanted to know how many was in the family and this and blah, blah, blah and he said, “Well, I’d like to meet your mother!”

And I thought, huh?

So I said, “Well fine!  Come down to the house then.”

They took us home and he come in and met mother and my dad and oh mother thought, oh my!  Nice gentleman.

My dad said, “He’s wonderful.  Very nice!”   So we made another date then.   He was going to pick me up, which he did, and he made his first mistake, Mel did.   He sat out in front and blowed the horn!

I started out the door and my dad said, “No you don’t!  You sit right down.”

I’m thinking, “Uh oh, well here’s the end of this!”

Dad goes out and he opens the door and he says, “Young man, if you would like to visit and see my daughter and take her out that’s fine but you do not sit and blow the horn you come up and knock on the door like a gentleman.”
I expected the door to slam shut and Mel to take off but he did not.  Here he came walking up with my dad (Laughs), so that was the start.

From then on it was – when my mother and father was sick and my mother had cancer and was dying of cancer, my dad died of a heart attack, he’s the first one they asked for.   They really forged a life-long relationship.

We got married October 31st, 1954 in Fostoria, Ohio.   It was Reformation Sunday was why we picked that day, but it was also Halloween and they always had weddings, back then on Sunday afternoons.

Then you always had your receptions in the church basements, so that’s what we did.   But we had come out of the church and it was snowing, and so we changed clothes, started on our honeymoon, got as far as Wapakoneta.

We got that far the first night and got up the next morning and were going to start on and the State Patrolman says, “You can’t go south,” and we were going south down to Kentucky.   They said, “You are going to have to stay or turn around because there’s a bad storm.”

So that took care of that.   We come home and had our honeymoon at home.   I cooked our first meal, was roast beef and mashed potatoes and gravy and corn and I had made a dish of Jell-O and that was our first meal.  And I wrote all this stuff down.

We moved to Findlay.  Then we…let’s see, our first one was born in 1955, so we wanted to name him after my so we had Thomas Lee, our firstborn.   Then we thought, well that’s kind of pretty, and then I thought, well, I’ll go with a biblical name.

The next one was John, and then the next one we thought…well, James, and the next one we went on and we thought, David, because I always liked David and Goliath.   So, I thought that’s good!  That’s a good name, David!  Well, then the next one which was number five came along and I said, “Well let’s forget about that.”

So next we had Douglas, and then of course we had the twins and they were Brian and Brad.

We set the boys down and told them that they were going to have a new brother or sister.

Well, then we found out it was twins so then we said, “You’re going to have two of whatever!”

So our second son John who’s the oldest now, and he still gets a big kick out of that because he said, “Fine!  Just make sure you bring us home two boys!  Don’t bring home any sisters!  We don’t want them!”

“We want brothers!”

They are the protectors and they’ve all kind of grown up where there were the older boys protect the younger ones, and still do.  They are very close, and so that was really very nice

I did all my own canning and freezing and everything, but yet I had help.  The two older boys had early morning paper routes and so they said, “No problem,” because Dad goes to work so early.  They would get up at five o’clock and get their papers and get them folded.

From then on the twins would be awake and so Tom would always say, “I’ll take one,” and John would always say, “I’ll take the other one,” and they fed them for me and they burped them and then they changed them.

Then they went and folded their papers and went on their paper routes so that I could catch my breath and get the day started with the other ones, and that was kind of how they…We lived pretty good.

Oh, I can tell lots of cute stories and I wrote a lot of them down, like Christmas mornings the boys had to stay at the top of the step until I would get downstairs and get the coffee made and get the hot chocolate going, and then they could all come down.

Well, the one morning Mel said, “I’ll take the twins down and you get the other boys ready,” so that’s fine.

So we all come bundling down the stairs then.  I told the boys, “Okay, be careful,” and here are the twins sitting underneath the Christmas tree and they are eating chocolate covered cherries and they’ve got them all over themselves, the tree, the carpet, everything.

I said, “Where is your dad?”  Looked in the front room and he’s asleep in the rocking chair!  Needless to say, I hollered, “Melford!”

He says, “I’m right here.  I got ‘em right…Where are they?”  (Laughter) So little things like that I write down.

When we would decorate the tree and the boys always said, “No, I’m not going to do it,” but we used to could get a…snowball.  It was a dip of ice cream wrapped in coconut with a candle stuck in it.

Christmas Eve or when we would do our tree that was our treat and the boys always said, “We’re not putting that icicles and that junk on it!” So I said, “Okay, we don’t have any treats.”

Well it didn’t take long to get the icicles and the balls and lights all on.  We had a round table that opened up and an antique table that the one boy still has, opened up to 12 people.  And we’d sit around and we’d turn just some little night lights on.  Then we’d light the candles around the table and their snowballs and then they’d each get two cookies that I had baked.  Decorated cookies, and that’s their treat.  Plus, I baked all of their birthday cakes and decorated them.