52 Years

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

Yesterday was my Mom and Dad’s 52nd wedding anniversary.

With the divorce rate being around 50% (and even higher for second marriages), that’s a pretty impressive accomplishment, and one I hope to meet eventually, although I’m 21 years behind them.

That’s pretty nuts, actually, to even think about how much their marriage has seen. I mean, Richard Nixon was president when they got married. He had, in fact, not even started his second term. Everyone’s home had a land-line telephone, the Vietnam War was still going on, there was no cable TV… in fact a lot of folks still only had black-and-white televisions.

No internet, really no computers at all, as least not the kind we think of these days. Cars were 30 feet long, The minimum wage was $1.20 an hour — and you could live of that, since,

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for example, My Mom and Dad’s house, the house they still live in, cost $12,000.

My parents taught me a lot about life. They were always there for me and my two sisters. I’m sure life wasn’t always easy raising a family on a teacher’s salary and a truck stop assistant manager’s wages, but they made it work. Sure, there were good times and hard times and they probably faced more troubles that they would ever want us to know about but we always had each other.

They were very “kid forward” parents, always putting our needs and wants ahead of their own. I can’t remember them ever really doing anything without us or at least without making sure we were taken care of, always willing to sacrifice as needed to put the kids first in, well, everything. It was always a family vacation, not a romantic couple’s getaway. We always had big Christmas haul’s from Santa Claus and I’m not sure they ever worried about big gifts for each other.

I guess that’s why I always approached raising my own kids that way. It’s also probably why they’re great grandparents — actually I guess they’re now great greatgrandparents (that’s a little confusing).

In any event, they’ve been driving each other crazy for more than half-a-century now, and I hope they can keep it up for a long time to come…