Commitment of a Lifetime

Happy 60th Anniversary to our amazing parents! We love you!

Today marks the 60th Wedding Anniversary for my sweet parents. They took their vows of marriage when they were both only 19-years-old on August 13, 1961. Two teenagers madly in love and excited to begin their life together.

I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am of my parents. They got married after my mom started college and my dad joined the US Navy and adult life came at them very quickly. They had my brother during their first year of marriage and, thus, started their joyful journey of parenting. They have both always LOVED babies and children and frequently tell us that they can’t imagine what people do without the free, built-in entertainment of children. They would sit for hours and watch my brother and I play and laugh at our antics. I definitely felt that love as I grew older since my parents have always been my biggest supporters and cheerleaders during life’s ups and downs.

Soon after having my brother, my dad began having severe health issues that would cause him to be medically discharged from the US Navy and begin a lifetime of discomfort that has rarely waned over the past 60 years. My mother bravely took on the role of caretaker for a sick husband and a new infant when she was only 20-years-old. At that time, my dad was having severe complications with Ankylosing Spondylitis, Fibromyalgia, and arthritis before those things became a common diagnosis. He was formally diagnosed with all three of those autoimmune diseases as soon as the doctors could put a name to his diverse and bothersome health issues. Each one of those diseases cause enough discomfort to sideline most people, but my dad has powered through all three of them combined for over sixty years now even though they have been debilitating at times.

When they were still in their early 20s and before I was born, my dad was offered a job in Houston, Texas with a contractor on site at NASA called Lockheed. While he was working full time at Lockheed, he took college courses to earn his computer science degree but had to drop out of classes due to serious eye issues that caused a doctor to tell him to either drop out of college or risk permanent damage to his vision. He dropped out of college one semester shy of graduating, but was still able to become one of the most respected computer programmers on site at NASA for over 47 years. I remember when my dad would try to take a day off of work, but he would get phone calls all day asking him questions about how to program something at NASA. He eventually had a personal computer that logged into NASA so that he could troubleshoot from home. I always joked about me logging on to that computer and accidentally launching the space shuttle from our house! (That wasn’t possible, but it was intimidating nonetheless!)

My dad is absolutely brilliant with computer programming. He is the oldest person I know who has an intuitive understanding of how computers operate. It says so much about his intellect that he actually thinks like a computer. He thinks everyone should be able to program a computer and doesn’t understand how I can be so intimidated by them. Even though he retired several years ago, he still programs computers all day long “for fun” from their home. Over the years, he has built several computers for me and has reprogrammed my phones and computers whenever I have needed help in those areas. He also bought me my first smart phone because he was fascinated with something that was as powerful as a computer, but was made to carry around in your pocket. The computers he had programmed during his early years at NASA took up half of the room!! He knows how to troubleshoot almost any issue imaginable on a computer, cell phone, or any other electronic device that is in production. It makes me laugh because I can barely turn a computer!!

My mom was an amazing stay-at-home-mom during my early life, but she also graduated from a junior college with an Interior Design degree and had her own interior design business in a store near our home for several years after that. She has a creative eye when it comes to design, color, and layout of a room which is why I tend to do things a little untraditionally in my own home. She has taught me to think outside the box with home decor and with life in general. My mom also taught me to read from a young age and modeled that for me by reading an average of a book a day her whole life. I have never met a person who could read so quickly in my life. I clearly remember spending hours writing essays in high school and asking her to read them for editing purposes. She would barely have the paper in her hands before she would hand it back to me already read. It was astonishing how quickly she could read and edit a paper due to being such a avid reader her entire life. I am truly thankful that she took me to the library every week and also read to me when I was young because reading has given me a lot of joy throughout the many seasons of my life.

In addition to her interior design shop, Decorating, Etc., my mom co-owned a home decor shop called A Country Shoppe with several of her friends. She worked at her home decor shop around the corner from our house to earn some extra spending money for frivolous expenses. She frequently helped pay for the expenses associated with my extra-curricular activities such as cheerleading and competitive dance and with extra, unexpected college expenses when I moved to College Station to attend Texas A&M University. She also taught me to dress well and decorate well without spending a lot of money. We hardly ever had extra money for name brand clothing, but I never felt underdressed or self-conscious because she taught me how to use money wisely when I shopped at the less expensive stores in Houston. Later in her life, my mother became a 6th grade teacher at a private school and taught there for years before she retired from teaching. She did an amazing job with her students and worked hard teaching them grammar, geography, and much more. She is the best grammarian and reader that I know and taught her students to excel in those areas. During her years at the school, she really enjoyed teaching and interacting with her students and her colleagues. She has kept in touch with many of them throughout the years.

Both my mom and my dad raised my brother and I to pursue knowledge, to ask questions when something doesn’t seem right, to be faithful to our friends and family, and to stay uninvolved with gossip and “small” matters. Basically, they taught me through example that small minded people tend to spend their time thinking about and talking about small, unimportant issues and people who have intelligent, curious minds should spend their time thinking and talking about issues that really matter in the scheme of life. They never said those words, but they never spent their time on drama of any sort and I am thankful for that gift. It has helped me to know what to pursue and what to avoid in order to have a happy, successful life.

An important thing I learned from my parents is that dedication to family and to marriage is extremely important. Over the past sixty years, they have loved one another even when things weren’t fun and life wasn’t easy. My dad’s health issues have caused my mom to have to step outside her comfort zone and advocate for him with doctors and the medical world for their entire marriage. Her intelligence and her ability to research problems and solutions has helped my dad receive better treatment on multiple occasions when she has noticed a discrepancy in his treatment plan. She has spent hours upon hours researching the diagnosis and treatment of many, many health issues that have occurred as a result of his autoimmune diseases.

Even though my dad felt absolutely terrible on most days in his younger years, he still worked HARD every day until his retirement in order to provide for our little family of four. He also bought and worked on dozens and dozens of old cars to sell for a small profit so that we could have extra money for vacations and for traveling to see both sets of my grandparents who lived out of state. We would frequently have five or six cool sports cars in our driveway while my dad was fixing them up to sell. I was able to drive Corvettes, Camaros, and some other not-so-cool cars during my high school years since I never had a car of my own until I was a senior in college and had to have one to student teach.

Concerning his health, I specifically remember him limping out the door after several different back surgeries, eye surgeries, and more to head to work at NASA when anyone else I know would have stayed in bed and complained. He rarely ever missed a day of work and rarely ever complained about his nagging health issues. To help him out, my mom kept our home very quiet because, when my dad returned home each day, he was exhausted from pushing through the long day at work with all of his health issues. Even today, I struggle when there is a lot of noise in my home because I was raised in such a quiet, peaceful home.

My parents moved to Texas right before I was born for my dad’s job at NASA. (Fun fact: I am the only person in my generation of our family who was born in Texas. 🙂 Because my mom and dad made the choice to move far away from their parents, they made sure that we stayed close to our grandparents and extended family by making frequent trips back to their home towns in Missouri, Alabama, and Tennessee. I was really close to my mother’s parents, cousins, and extended families in LaMonte, Missouri and Sedalia, Missouri; my father’s mother and my step-grandfather in Montgomery, Alabama; and dozens of my father’s aunts, uncles, and cousins in my father’s birthplace and childhood home in Cleveland, Tennessee. We spent almost every major holiday traveling to and from Missouri, Alabama, and Tennessee so that we could stay connected with our families. I am truly thankful for those amazing memories with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins at their homes and farms in those three beautiful states.

The fact that my parents have been married for sixty years and our family has never truly celebrated that milestones of their marriage inspired me to write about my parents and their inspiring SIXTY YEARS OF MARRIAGE. What a wonderful thing to celebrate!! During those years, they worked really hard to provide a great life for my brother and me in Houston, Texas. When we were growing up, our family had a lot of fun experiences and memories with our cousins, our close family friends, and our wonderful neighbors. We always had a lot to smile and laugh about and, despite the hard things going on around us at times, we were taught to push through and find joy in simple things, family, and friends. When my brother and I started having our own children, my parents immediately stepped up to provide love and support for them as well. They have been amazing grandparents to each of our children and have shown each one of them love and kindness at every turn. All of our children sincerely enjoy being with my parents and look forward to spending time with them whenever it is possible. I am grateful for the time they have spent together. It has made a wonderful difference in the lives of my children.

Mom and Dad, I am truly so proud of you both. I’m inspired by the legacy of love and hard work you have left for Brent and me to follow. You started your life together at such a young age with some hard things on your plate from the beginning, but have created a beautiful little family for yourselves that includes children, grandchildren, friends, large extended families, a beautiful home, lots of beautiful belongings, and a lifetime of good things to celebrate. You are a blessing to all who know you and I am proud to be your daughter. Brent and I want to thank you for all you have done throughout our lives to give us the encouragement and support we needed to go out into the world and be confident and successful. We could not have done it without your guidance and love. We are truly grateful for your sacrifice and dedication to our family over the past 60 years!!

Happy 60th Anniversary to you two!! You should be super proud of all you have accomplished together! Your parents would definitely be proud of you both if they saw you today. I know they are watching and smiling on you both!

We love you so much!!