WeddingS



A memorable week. Yesterday, Thursday, June 28, 2018, at Holy Nativity, the Altar, Judith and my brother Walt, high school sweethearts, both widowed, were, Linda and I witnessing, united in Holy Matrimony and began married life in thanksgiving and sharing with God in Holy Communion. 

So happy am I for them, overwhelmingly so for my brother of course, and for Judy being with him. I think they had this in mind in the 1950s. May they live a hundred twenty years, and let all the people say, "AMEN!"

 And sixty one years ago today, June 29, 1957, Linda and I were married at Holy Nativity, the day set in my memories. After our week's honeymoon at the beach in a cottage loaned to us by old friend Katherine Laughlin, Linda took me to the airport and I flew off to Newport, Rhode Island in what as I recall was a Lockheed Constellation, to begin what we did not at the time realize would begin a 20-year Navy life for us. By then I had tossed the idea of going to seminary and becoming an Episcopal priest and we didn't know what life might bring, nor, so young, were we concerned about it. 

 On our wedding day Linda was 20 and I was 21. I retired from the U. S. Navy at 42, had my own defense consulting firm, taught political science courses for the University of West Florida; then began a new life at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on my 45th birthday. Linda and I have three children, Malinda, Joe & Tass, and I have four, adopting granddaughter Kristen when she was very small.

 Time is full of surprises, unexpected turns of events, as over and again two roads diverged in a yellow wood, Robert Frost's story of life that has brought us so happily to 7H. 

 T

 The Road Not Taaken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.