Just like a movie script

Last week, on February 20, my dad would have been 98 years old. I’ve been writing all month of what little I know about his life before he married Mom.

In the fall of 1944, the depression was releasing its gripe on the nation and he was able to get a job as a school bus driver, making $58.20 a month.  His route was long, 40 miles round trip, twice a day. 

One winter afternoon, as Dad was driving the bus full of kids home, he overheard a group of girls talking about the basketball game that night. One of the girls, Margaret, wanted to go, but she didn’t have a ride. At that point my dad interrupted the conversation.  “I have a horse”.

The high school girls must have looked at him and said “what?”  Margaret, though, rose to the challenge.  When they got to her house, she ran inside and asked her dad’s permission to go to the game that night.  My dad drove her home later in his mother’s car.  He had just turned 30; she was still 17.        

Doesn’t it sound like something out of a movie? She graduated from high school and turned 18 that May. They were married by the justice of the peace on July 6. And the rest as they say is history.