This first blog post will summarize how my maternal grandparents met and just a little about their marriage. Later posts will cover each grandparent, their ancestors and descendants.
Temperance Lulu "Lu" Lord and Edward Aloysius Joseph O'Connor were married by L.D. Jennings, a Justice of the Peace in a civil ceremony on Monday, November 17, 1919 in San Diego, California. Lu was 19 and Edward was 22, this was the first and only marriage for both of them.
 |
| Community Center where Lu & Edward met. |
Lu met Edward sometime in early 1919 at a dance held every Saturday by the Society Women of La Jolla (California) for "the boys" stationed at Camp Kearny who were in training for WWI. Lu's father, Richard Ela Lord, and mother, Ida May Butler, permitted Lu and her older sister Pearl to attend one of these dances which were usually held on the cement tennis court at the Community Center. The night they attended was cold and rainy so the dance was moved to the small Community Hall. Pearl had met a soldier there and introduced his friend to Lu. It was Edward, standing behind his friend, hesitantly, shyly, with a tentative smile on his face. Lu remembers thinking, he was not a bad looking soldier, then that he was cute! Lu's sister, Pearl, asked Lu to show Edward how to dance since he didn't know how. Lu remembers that Edward's eyes followed Pearl as she and her soldier made their way to the dance floor, thinking he wasn't interested in her as the substitute dance teacher. So she started out by asking him some questions and found out that he was from New York City. That conversation continued until Pearl returned and the dance lesson never happened.
After several months of Edward coming to see Lu, he proposed while they were sitting on a cot on Lu's front porch overlooking the Pacific Ocean's coastline. They were watching ships silhouetted against a beautiful sunset sky when Edward put his arm around Lu's shoulder and said, "I don't know how to do this, but will you marry me?" Lu didn't answer for a while, listening to Edward's plans to get a little house to live in and how he would be good to her. He kissed her, as Lu remembers it was not an earth-shattering kiss, but enough so that she finally managed to say, "Yes."
 |
| Camp Kearny @1919 |
Lu later wrote about the days leading up to their marriage in her anecdotal book, My Grandma Dotes, that it took two tries to get it done because, in their hurry to marry, they went to the Justice of the Peace office on a Saturday only to find that it wasn't open. So they had to wait until Monday. Lu returned that Saturday to her trundle bed at her parent's house behind their grocery store at 1006 Prospect Road in La Jolla, California, and Edward returned to his bunk at Camp Kearny.
Lu's father, Richard, offered to take them to San Diego on Monday because he had to get some groceries for his store anyway. Lu's mother, Ida, also went with them and after the ceremony the newlyweds were dropped off at the house Edward had rented in La Jolla. She sometimes referred to herself as the farmer's daughter who married a guy from New York City.
Looking back, Lu stated that a civil marriage was alright with her, that she had no ambitions to have a big, fancy wedding, in fact, that she was afraid to, being too shy. Edward was raised Catholic and told her that they couldn't get married by a Catholic Priest unless she became a Catholic. As a self-described militant Methodist, she would not become a Catholic, having lived her life to that point without the benefit of a Catholic Priest. Edward told her that although the Catholic Church would allow him to be married in a civil ceremony, he would be living in sin if he did so. Lu noted that although it didn't really seem to bother him at the time, the matter rose up again several years later and nearly wrecked their marriage.
In My Grandma Dotes' story "Pretending" Lu reminisced about Edward never calling her by a pet name which was pretty popular in the romance novels she read. She later wrote, "Oh, I rather like being called a pet name. Would it hurt if he were to call me dear or darling, once in a while? But he didn't believe in them so he didn't call me any of them. But somewhere in those early years, he started calling me "Lukes." Was that a pet name?"
Pictured to the left are Lu and Edward walking down a street in San Francisco in 1941. Don't they look like a very fashion-conscious, even proud couple?
One of Lu's recollections of their marriage was that it was filled with kind and thoughtful things Edward did for her and gave to her. "He opened every door for me. I mean, literally, opened every door for me when we were out." She went on to say, "he never, I mean never, forgot a birthday, a wedding anniversary, a Christmas, a Valentine Day, an Easter, a Mother's Day. Even when we were so broke it was pathetic, he gave me a gift."
Afterthoughts:
1. I appreciate that my grandmother documented her life story by writing My Grandma Dotes. Self-written, -typed and -published while in her 90's, it gives us all quite an insight into her own thoughts and questions about life as she experienced it, such as when she met grandpa for the first time. How many of you have documented your life for future generations to read? Does your family know the story of when you met your spouse, the love of your life, your soulmate, your significant other, or anyone else who has stuck with you through all of life's trials and tribulations? Grandma knew that her parents, Richard Ela Lord from Toolesboro, Iowa, and Ida May Butler from New Boston, Illinois, living just across the Mississippi River from each other, also met at a dance around 1882-1883. Did grandma realize that she met her future husband under the same circumstances as her parents? Did her parents realize the coincidence?
2. I remember those big, fancy Valentine candy boxes which Grandpa gave to Gran every year. I think she even kept quite a few of them over the years because I remember finding some in her bedroom one time. What do you remember about things that Gran and Grandpa gave as presents to each other?
3. When I married Charles "Beaver" Curo in October of 1969, we were married not by a Justice of the Peace but at the very small Wedding Bell Chapel in the Hillcrest area of San Diego. Very similar to grandma and grandpa, the only people in attendance were my dad, Clarence Stewart, and Beaver's mom, Edith Curo. So unprepared were we, that Beaver used his mom's ring to slip on my finger but it was too big and fell right off. Our small wedding took place just weeks short of grandma and grandpa's 50th Anniversary and we recently celebrated our 50th Wedding Anniversary.
Next Post: Edward's Family Ties — His parents and grandparents will be revealed.
