Young Love Between a Soldier and His Bride
Young love
By Blenda Blevins Chapman
Daddy was born in Huntington, West Virginia in 1922. A few years after he was born his family moved just over the river to Kentucky. The last year mom was able to talk to me coherently, she would share pieces of her past life with me. She had experienced a stroke and eventually lost the ability to speak. She always told her nurses that she was a war bride and then she would talk to me about her marriage.
She met daddy through a friend who was dating a guy whose friend was looking for a pen pal. Those friends connected her with the man who would eventually become my father. He had joined the army at 17 to fight the enemy during WWII and he was doing a tour overseas when they became pen pals. They wrote to each other for four years.
They finally met in person when he was on leave in Paducah, Kentucky. When he returned in October–they eloped. My grandmother wouldn’t sign for my mother to get married so they traveled over the bridge into Metropolis, Illinois and tied the knot.
My mother and father both told me they knew their love was real and they wanted to marry quickly because Dad had re-enlisted and they didn’t know when they would be together again. Daddy went back to fighting the enemy overseas and mom set up housekeeping and worked in a shoe factory in Paducah.
On D-Day my momma received a phone call wanting her to come by train and meet my dad. By the time she told me this story she was losing her speech from her second stroke, so I listened carefully and I remember every word.
She traveled to Louisville and she said there were military men as far as the eye could see. She searched to find her train, with a bag of fried chicken in one hand and her suitcase in the other. A young soldier came up to her and asked her where she was going. She smiled at me as she remembered and told me she said, “I’m going to meet my husband. He is just out of the military. It’s been forever since I have seen him.”
Evidently the chicken must have smelled very good because the young man told her, ‘I’ll tell you what, if you’ll share your lunch, I’ll run on and get 2 seats and 2 colas.” That sounded like a great idea to her and she took him up on his offer. When they finally arrived at their destination she found my father. He was so exhausted from traveling that all he wanted to do was get a hotel room for the night and rest. Apparently she said yes because that’s what they did. She smiled at me and said, “Your brother was born about 9 months later.”
Young Love Can Last
They were married 60 years when Daddy died during my first year of working at T. J. Samson Hospital in Glasgow, Kentucky. Dad talked often about meeting my mom and how he knew he was going to marry her.
He was more than just my father, he was my hero.
