When we moved to Enid, the closest church was the Evangelical Church down on Randolph, I believe.  Later on, we attended a local Sunday School which was first on N. Fifth Street between Walnut and Chestnut.  Probably pretty close to Chestnut.  Later it moved around to 2 or 3 different places.  It was during the years we went to that Sunday School that I got acquainted with Virgie.  About 1912, 13 or 14, I had been going to First Methodist Church with Virgie and her folks and I joined the church there in that period of time.  

 

While we were attending this little neighborhood Sunday school, Virgie and I both taught classes.  We associated in several ways.  Of course we were neighbors and we taught the Sunday school class together and then I took some violin lessons from Virgie and we were all interested in neighborhood gatherings.  We had sort of a neighborhood sing song or something like that.  I helped Virgie grade papers and things like that.  We just gradually got better acquainted as time went on and I guess that it was somewhere way back in well I know in 1915 we had got pretty fond of each other.  Virgie went to Lawrence KA for a short course at KU in the summer of 1915 and I have several letters and cards that we exchanged and somewhere maybe 15 or 17, probably 16, we decided that we were really in love and needed to do something about it.  Referring to old correspondence, I find that Virgie was in Lawrence KS, attending a summer course at KU in 1915.  In the letter I wrote her, I told her that I was making $.25/Hr. working at the Arctic Ice Plant.  That was pretty good wasn't it.  Another thing verified, was that Virgie was in Wyoming working at the Harvey House in the summer of 1918 and that I went to work at OG&E at $90/Mo.  No pay for overtime of course.  During the summer of 1918 before I went to work for OG&E, I remember seeing the eclipse while I was working at the Arctic Ice Plant.  This was a total eclipse or near total eclipse of the sun, the most eclipse that I have ever seen, I believe.

 

We decided that we better not get to courting publicly or on account of the differences in our ages there might be quite a bit of pressure put on us.  So we worked out some schemes, we saw each other on the way home from school in a thick grove of trees and we passed notes at those times and at other times.  I bought a nice big trunk that we still have and when I was going thru some of the old things I saw bill where I bought it. It was from the Kennedy Mercantile Co on the East side of the square.  I put the trunk in storage at the Enid Transfer & Storage Co. and it served as a sort of a hope chest.  We began to gradually accumulate things such as bedding and personal things that we wanted to be sure to take with us when we got married and began to make plans for how we were going to do that.  We had this trunk full by the time we were going to get married and I had been taking correspondence courses in electricity and arranged for a probable job at Western Electric Co at the Hawthorn Works in Chicago.  [Robert: Dad's violin was in trunk and got neck broken.] 

 

I took the train first and left for Chicago and then Virgie had talked her mother into going to Wyoming for the summer and so they left later for that and we met in Kansas City and Virgie talked her mother into secrecy on the thing so we kept it secret for a while, actually until we got ready to come back to Enid.  I had arranged for the man who issued the marriage license in Kansas City, he had a Methodist Preacher for his father, and we went out to the Methodist Parsonage in Kansas City and this man came out there and acted as a witness.  So we were married on June 8, 1920 at about 9 P.M.  (During one of my business trips to Kansas City, Virgie wrote the following note on note paper from the Hotel Muhlbach: "Oakley Methodist Church, 4600 North Ind. CH1-7076.  Old church a little white cottage at 615 Elmwood.  Rev. John N Moore lived in Apartment at Spruce & Indianapolis.  Mrs. Hughes secretary of church, so very nice"  Rev. Moore was the minister at our wedding.  I suspect the address of the parsonage was 615 Elmwood.)  We went back to the hotel and stayed all night.  We put Virgie's mother on the train the next afternoon.  We took the train to Chicago that evening.  We got a room up there.  The next day they delivered the trunk to our new home on Vincennes Avenue by horse drawn truck or dray.

 

The letters of 1915, indicated that Virgie already had thought quite a bit of each other and in 1918 indicated that we has already decided that we loved each other and had started preliminary plans for marriage.  I might indicate here that this certainly wasn't any fly by night idea of getting married as far as we were concerned because we were at least from 1915 to 1920 gradually approaching marriage.  I believe during 1915 and 1916 it was dawning on us that we loved each other and in 1918 deciding for sure that it was love and that marriage was reasonable despite our difference in ages.  [Robert:  Dad was apprehensive about what his folks might do if they knew they were going to get married.]