2 December, 1950
Dad and Mom were married on 2 December, 1950 in the Clay County Courthouse in Piggott Arkansas. They made their first home in a little three room shotgun house in Bernie, Missouri. While Dad was away in the army, Mom made the payments of $5 per month on their new little home. Mom was 19 when she and Dad married, this would be her third marriage, she was married twice before, the first time at the tender age of 13. No children were born to her previous marriages. Mom and Dad had the love of a lifetime. She stood by his side until his dying day. She often told me how she used to worship the ground he walked on she did not think she could ever love another man as much as she loved my dad.
Mom and Dad had five children born to their union, myself and two sisters and two brothers. I am the baby of the family and my oldest sibling is fifteen years older than me. After their first few years of married life, my parents decided to join the church and give their hearts to God. My Father was baptized on 12 June, 1955 at the United Pentecostal Church in Dexter, Missouri. My father soon became a Licensed Ordained Minister with the United Pentecostal Church International based out of Hazelwood, Missouri. After leaving Bernie my parents relocated to Morley, Missouri where Dad pastored the United Pentecostal Church in Morley for a while. After leaving Morley they moved to Jackson, Missouri and Dad was Assistant Pastor to Rev. J.D Collins at the United Pentecostal Church in Jackson, Missouri. That is where they lived when I was born. There time in Jackson was wrought with much pain. It all started with the death of their 5 year old son Mark. He got his finger caught in a lawn chair and almost cut off one of his fingers. My parents rushed him to the hospital but he developed Tetanus and died just three months later. He was buried in Bernie Cemetery next to my Grandmother Bertha. After the loss of his son, Dad just wasn't the same. Having lost his mother at a young age and then going off to war in Korea and having to fight for his country and then to lose his small child, he questioned God why. It wasn't long after that until my father turned his back on God and the church. He sunk deeper into Depression and battled it off and on all the rest of his life. My mother stood right by his side. She continued to go to church and take her children in spite of her husband's choice to no longer attend. My mother was a God fearing woman who loved God with all her heart and she trusted him implicitly. In his later years, when I was in my teens, dad tried to return to the church and he once again pastored for a few months, but things were not the same and he soon fell away once again, never to return.
After choosing to leave Jackson, my parents moved back to Bernie, Missouri and remained in the area until 1989 when they moved to Bertrand Missouri. They were living in Bertrand when Dad got Lung Cancer and passed away on 22 January, 1993 in the Barnes Jewish Hospital in Saint Louis, Missouri. He was buried next to my brother Mark and my Grandmother Bertha, and his father Columbus who had died the previous January. Mom lived for 23 more years after the death of her husband and she passed away on 4 February, 2016 at the home of my sister in Dexter, Missouri. She is buried in Bernie Cemetery next to her older sister Laura and Brother in Law George Wright. Mom could not be buried next to Dad because Grandpa had bought those four plots years ago and there was not room left for Mom to be buried next to Dad.