What kind of wedding did you and grandpa have?

You will be surprised that I am copying my answer about where we got married and the whole story from an interview that Alysia Gabe Countryman wrote when she was in fifth grade. Can you believe that? I have kept it all these years! For the answer to the question about our marriage I will copy what Alysia wrote! (In future blogs I will copy what she wrote about the interviews she had with her Grandpa Galen Neal and Grandma Lois Neal separately.) She called her story that she wrote about our lives & marriage-- TOGETHER FOREVER—WRITTEN BY ALYSIA GABE IN 5th GRADE Love and marriage for Galen Neal and Lois Bearse began when they meet at the Methodist Church in Shell Rock. Their first date was to a boxing match at Electric Park in Waterloo, Grandpa was 22 at the time and Grandma was 19. Galen drove a 1941 blue Ford. and they double dated with a couple of friends.Grandpa and Grandma dated for two years before Grandpa asked Grandma to marry him. They were engaged for one year and then united in love on September 12, 1942, in Princeton, Missouri. For their honey moon, they went to Boloxi, Miss. Grandpa and Grandma will have been married for 57 years on September 12. Out of all their anniversaries Grandpa says that their 50th was his favorite because, they received a VCR from their children. Grandma says her favorite was their 25th because it was their first trip to visit Grandpa’s sister in Hawaii. GRANDMA LOIS NEAL’S ADDITION This is Grama Neal writing a little addition to what Alysia wrote in out interview with her. To explain why we did not have a church wedding was because Galen had an offer to teach Mathematics at an Air Corps in Biloxi, Miss. He had to be down there to accept the job in two weeks! In Iowa when you got a marriage lisence there was a 6 week wait before you could get married. Remember this was just after Pearl Harbor was bombed and Galen was so excited to be chosen to teach at an Army Air Corps Base in Biloxi. We asked Dorothy (Galen’s sister) and her husband Don Walter to go with us to Princeton. Dorothy was expecting a baby in January so she did not feel like going. Consequently,since Don and Galen were such good friends ( Galen had played in Don’s band for several Summers by then) so Don consented to go with us. When we arrived in Marshalltown it was early in the morning and Don was always so jolly and so much fun that it was a great trip. Don liked to sing so we had entertainment all the way there. We arrived at the court house in Princeton and got our marriage lisence. Galen knew I really wanted to get married in a church so he inquired if there was a Methodist Minister in Princeton. They told him that the Methodist Minister lived right close to the court house (which was quite convenient) so in no time at all we said our wedding vows in the home of the Methodist Minister and the Minister’s wife and Don Walter was our witness. ( War time causes a lot of changes in plans.) We stayed at the Russel Lampson Hotel in Waterloo on our wedding night and the next day was Sunday and they were having a Neal Reunion near Shell Rock that day so we went to the Reunion with Galen’s folks and everyone congratulated us when they heard we were married. We left for Biloxi the next week and Galen could have had the teaching job, but we could not find any place to live down there so we came back through New Orleans and visited Galen’s former room mate at Cornell College and his new bride. It was a wonderful Honeymoon trip anyway!!. We came back to the farm and as I told about in a former blog we decided to move into the tenant house on the farm and I am so glad it turned out that way. It was wonderful that we could be near Galen’s folks while our kids were growing up. They loved their Grandpas & Grandmas. My folks, Grandpa and Grandma Bearse, were living near Charles City at the time. (I forgot to mention that the St. Charles M. Church where my Dad was a minister at the time heard I got married so they had a surprise wedding shower for me. That was a lot of fun since I had lots of good friends in that church.) Galen and I lived happily ever after! Well, most of the time anyway! Ha Ha