Dear Grandkids,
So a few weeks ago I posted where I was 50 years ago on that day. Today I’ll briefly tell you where I was 40 years ago today and 30 years ago today.
40 Years Ago Today – I got married. To my first wife. To my only wife. You know her as Nona. I have blogged about this day before HERE and HERE and HERE, but here are a few things that I have not told you about that day.
- We were married at Sedge Garden Methodist Church in Kernersville, NC – where Nona had gone to church as a little girl.
- The ceremony was at 2 pm. We then had a reception in Winston-Salem at Pinebrook Country Club.
- We flew to Atlanta that evening for our honeymoon night before we flew to Bermuda on Sunday.
- I don’t remember the name of the pastor who declared us married – we didn’t really know him well (but as the pastor of the church he had to be involved) but one of my best friends did much of the ceremony – Jimmy Carr. He was a seminary student at the time and I knew he and his wife Vicki from my home town, Aiken SC. I had also live with them in Gloucester, MA during my first year of seminary at Gordon-Conwell.
- One of the songs that we had sung at our wedding was called This Is The Day by Scott Wesley Brown. It was a perfect song for a perfect day.
- It was a beautiful, sunny, awesome day as we were surrounded by friends and family.
30 Years Ago Today – Nona and I have always made it a point to get away by ourselves every year. This was especially true when your parents were still little. We knew that we needed the time away to invest in our marriage so that we could be properly fueled to invest in them. For our 10th anniversary we spent a few days on the island of St Thomas. Christy was 5, Scott was almost 4, and Tucker was 3 weeks shy of 1 year old.
One of my favorite memories from that trip was the meal we enjoyed 30 years ago tonight. It was at a seaside restaurant called The Chart House. The Chart House is a chain of steak restaurants that we have frequented whenever we could because it has special memories for us. The first one that we went to was in August of 1979 in the French Quarter in New Orleans. We had just met in June in Galveston Texas on a Campus Crusade for Christ beach project. When the project was over, Nona drove with me to New Orleans where I went to school at Tulane University. We spent 18 hours together in The Big Easy together before she flew home to North Carolina. It was soon after our Chart House meal that we kissed for the first time in Jackson Square. So any meal at the Chart House brings back that awesome memory.
40 years sounds like a long time to be married. But I promise that 40 years goes by very fast. As you grow up and as you get married take the time to create lots of memories that you can relive again and again.
We are going to do just that today and tomorrow. Perhaps next year I’ll be blogging about the memories we created on our 40th anniversary. Ask me about it sometime.
And never forget that you are very loved,
Pop Pop