John Fillmore and Pearl Taylor Webster, the parents of my future wife, Maradyn, moved their family to a farm west of Tindall that had ground on both sides of the Weldon River in the early 1930s. My family lived nearby on the west side of the Weldon River. I graduated high school in 1936 and dated Maradyn’s older sister, Mevlyn a few times, but there was just something about the younger girl.
Maybe it was her smile.
July 30, 1938 was my first date with Maradyn, who hadn’t turned 16 yet. I still remember that night. We watched a movie in Trenton, a western starring Tom Mix, a cowboy hero. She didn’t like Tom Mix but I hardly noticed the movie as I was captivated by her company.
Maybe it was her eyes.
I went to Trenton Junior College one year in 1940. Maradyn graduated Trenton High School in 1941 and then Trenton Junior College in 1943 with a teaching degree. She taught school one year in Spickard in the same room in which my mother, Blanche, had taught previously. Over this period, I asked her to marry me several times, but no deal.
Maybe it was the sound of her voice.
The lure of the big city took her to Los Angeles, CA in June of 1944 to work in a jewelry store while I did day work and farmed with my dad and my younger brothers, Clifford and Charles, here in Missouri. After Maradyn was in California for about six months, I had a dozen red roses sent to her house that she shared with her sister Mevlyn and two other girls. The girls were all excited and told her she had better catch this one, but still no deal.
We kept in touch, but after two years she told me in a letter that she had found another man and it was over between us. It hurt, but I moved on. Then, after she had been in California for four years her dad came by one afternoon to tell me that Maradyn was coming back home to visit.
What??? Why was he telling me?…
She came home on June 3, 1948. I was apprehensive, but that evening I stopped by her family’s house (my heart was pounding) and told Maradyn I was going to St. Joe on business and did she want to come along? She said yes, (my head was spinning) and we spent the evening catching up on recent history and old memories. She had missed me.
Maybe it was her laugh.
The fire was still there for both of us, but I told her that I had a date with another girl the next night and that I had been stood up before and that I wouldn’t do that to anyone. I honored my commitment, but it was my last date with anyone other than Maradyn. We spent every evening in each other’s company and I think she sensed that I didn’t want to relive previous rejections, so after about two months she said, “If we are going to get married hadn’t we better tell the folks?”
I happily agreed.
It was a dream come true for me and I never took her for granted. Maradyn was a very pretty woman, down to earth and values similar to mine, and I knew from the first that she was the right one for me. It just took her a little longer to figure it out.
I was 30 and she was 26 when we were married on Oct. 15, 1948. After we were married, she worked with me on the farm and later as a bookkeeper for multiple businesses. One of her interests was genealogy, which led her to start the Grundy County Genealogy Society and its publication, “Grundy Gleanings.” Everything she did, she did well. My mother told my sister, Mary, that Maradyn could do more with less than anyone she knows; a great compliment from my mother.
We were married 61 cherished years. We lived the dream. When I get lonesome, I still write to her on a tablet I keep next to my chair.
Maybe she just checked all the boxes.