Today is my father's birthday. He was born 110 years ago today in Cheboygan, Michigan. As always, I light a candle to remember the lives of loved ones who are now gone.
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| Arthur Paul Bliese at the age of three months |
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| Dad as a young man-- probably his first photo as a minister. He always had that small cross on his lapel. My parents eloped on December 22, 1931, during Christmas break, while my father was still in seminary. Seminarians were not supposed to be married, so they were really being daring. The reason they got married early is that my Grauerholz grandfather was giving Mom a hard time, saying that Dad would never marry her. She was just a lowly farmer's daughter (the only one in her family with a college degree, by the way). Dad got angry and decided that he was going to prove Mom's father wrong, right then and there. So they eloped across the border to Red Cloud, Nebraska and then kept it a secret. He went back to seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, and Mom continued living at home and teaching one-room school at the Sunnyside School near where she lived in Kansas. The secret came out when Dad told his parents. They felt sorry for Mom that she didn't have rings, so they got a lovely set and mailed them to her. When they arrived and the package was opened in front of everyone, the cat was out of the bag. Then Mom's father really got angry. But the deed was done.I didn't find out that they had eloped until I was in college. I happened to come across their marriage license in the filing cabinet. I asked her why they got married in Red Cloud, Nebraska, rather than home in Kansas. She gave me some nonsense about how it was the depression and they didn't have money for a big wedding. However, I persisted in saying, "But why Red Cloud? You could have had a small wedding in Kansas." Finally, she fessed up and told what happened. |
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| Mom and Dad in front of Mom's home in Kansas |
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| Only wedding picture: Taken with their friends and confederates Elmer and Esther Bose, who went with them to Red Cloud |
2 comments:
Thank you Rhoda for the history, and the pictures. I hadn't heard about Mom's parents' part in the elopement, or how she got the rings.
Loren,
Rosemary also said that she hadn't heard the whole story as I told it. That is because a lot of what I said came from memories that Aunt Martha Grauerholz told me. When Gene and I were traveling in 1979-80, we stopped in Nebraska and had a great long conversation with Martha. I asked her to tell me memories she had of Mom's life. She told me the elopement story as I have retold it here.
Rhoda
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