Marion &
Micki's
First
Grandchild! |
Phil went into the National Guard and when he and Gretchen were
first married he had to leave for his active duty. In January
after they were married I planned to have a family dinner for
Marion's Dad and that same day Gretchen went to the hospital and
Tom was born on January 17th 1965, our first Grandchild. What
a proud, happy and confusing day that was, what with having a
family dinner, waiting for news from the hospital and trying to
contact Phil. As usual it all worked out and we were the proud
grandparents.
Marion &
Micki's
Second
Grandchild! |
The next thing of importance that happened while we lived there
was that Trisha was born on December 21st 1968. She had Scoliosis
when she was born and that began a long treatment with a brace
for 13 years, surgeries and being bedfast for six months two times.
She is certainly a strong person for having to undergo all of
the misfortune that she has had, and many more that I'm sure
that we knew nothing about. Along the way Phil and Gretchen certainly
became strong.
Three More
Grandchildren!
Christopher
1974
Nicole
1978
Melissa
1980
|
The next thing was that Rick and Becky got married. Their marriage
didn't survive but they had three wonderful children, Chris, Nicole
and Melissa. (Melissa was the first Grandchild to be named for
my Grandma Little and that made me very happy). We feel the greatest
blessing of our lives has been our wonderful family. There have
been some problems, but nothing that couldn't be handled or
that broke up the family, which I think is one of the worst things
that could happen. It would be hard for any of you to comprehend
how important you are to us, and I think the older we get, the
more important you are.
After the important events happened that I have mentioned above,
our lives seemed to settle down to working, playing Golf and enjoying
our family and the daily routine of our lives. During those years,
Marion lost his Dad and unfortunately that caused a breakup in
that family that was never healed. Everyone loses so much when
this happens, and most usually it is caused by the greed of some
member of the family. In the end, the one who causes the break-up
loses the most but everyone loses something, and it really is
a shame. I guess because that never happened in my family before,
it seems so terrible to me.
We had lived in the old house about ten years and some friends
of ours were going to Florida for a vacation and asked us to come
down and spend a few days with them, so we decided to fly down
and come back with them. We had never been to Florida before
and we thought it was wonderful. We have never been known to
plan things out very carefully or plan ahead very much, (As you
know now we went to town one day to get a pair of shoes for Marion
and came home with a new refrigerator and new TV. Another time
we went to Anderson to buy some chicken and came home with a Cadillac.)
Anyway we saw so many people there where one of them was sick
and had to be cared for by the other mate that we thought we should
start thinking about retiring.
Marion had worked at GM for 37 1/2 years and I was getting tired
of working and I guess retiring was in the back of our minds,
but not very seriously. We talked about it more and more. We
put our house on the market and went back to Florida for a few
days, bought a mobile home there and came home and got seriously
into the retirement mode.
Our intentions were to sell the place we had, buy a place from
the other brothers from their Dad's Estate but due to the break
up in the family that didn't happen then so we had to put the
things in storage that we didn't sell at our sale and take the
other things that we wanted to Florida with us. While we were
getting ready for our sale, my Aunt Kate died and we had to close
her house too, so it was a very busy time.
When we got to Florida, the mobile home was all new and we felt
like we were on vacation all of the time. Marion played a lot
of golf, I got a bike and rode every day, shopped a lot and just
in general enjoyed everything about it. We also had good friends
that we went out to eat a lot with, played cards and just thought
we would live there. We traded the mobile home we had for a
larger one and were perfectly happy there, we thought. We stayed
down there for seven months before we came home the first time.
We had stored our furniture and things at Gib's before we went
to Florida, thinking it would just be for a short time so we had
to move our things to another storage place. We were home for
about three weeks before we went back. While we were here I guess
I began to have a few doubts about living in Florida but didn't
mention it at the time.
After we went back to Florida, things went along much the same
as they had been before but I guess I started thinking more about
going home and having a place of our own here too. When we came
home in the Spring, we were able to get the place on Madison
Ave. that we had planned to in the beginning. The people who
were in it finally moved out and we started cleaning it up. I
don't think I ever saw so much dirt. The windows in the kitchen
were so dirty that I had to use 409 and scouring pads before I
could even think of washing them normally. I had to clean the
lime off the bathtub with a screwdriver, and everything else was
just as dirty. The kids came and helped us get started on the
place. We stayed in it for two weeks with a bed, a crockpot,
an electric skillet, coffee pot and small TV while we tried to
clean and paint it enough to move the rest of our things in.
The kids painted the bedroom so we could feel better about putting
a bed in it. We cleaned and painted and then started moving
our things out of storage a few things at a time.
Finally we had established a home again and it was so wonderful
to be back in Pendleton with our friends and family. We stayed
there that Summer and then went back to Florida for the Winter,
thinking that now we had really found our lifestyle, Florida
in the Winter and Pendleton in the Summer like so many other people
did. When we came back the next Spring, we rejoined the Country
Club, bought another golf cart and started playing golf and doing
the things we had done before we went to Florida in the first
place.
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