June 29, 1957
Linda and I were the first couple married in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida. The concrete block church was only what is now Battin Hall, standing in a sand lot among palmettos and scrub oaks. Metal folding chairs on the dusty concrete floor, the roll-up matchstick blinds weren't yet in the bare windows, and don't get your car stuck in the sand.
Linda was twenty years old and had to get parental consent to marry. I was 21, just graduated from the University of Florida and in ten days heading off to U.S. Navy Officers Candidate School, Newport, Rhode Island and GKW after that. Dating and going steady since she was a junior and I a senior at Bay High, we had been pinned since my freshmen year at Florida and engaged since Christmas 1956. Her father was stunned at our short engagement, protested that I had asked him if Linda and I could become engaged but nobody had said anything about marriage or a wedding, and was hesitant to sign the consent form. But my paranoia knew her mother, a native of Tuscaloosa and a graduate of the University of Alabama, was ever hopeful that some young man with an Alabama pedigree and the scion of a prominent Alabama family would ride up on his white horse. Any Gator with any sense at all knows you haven't never been able to trust nobody from Alabama and that won't never change, and I wanted to make GeeDee* sure no Charging Elephant came around courting as soon as my Lockheed Constellation lifted off the ground at Fannin Field, Panama City Airport.
So the wedding went forward. The wedding was in the -- church. The wedding reception, and wedding cake baked in Birmingham with beautiful spun sugar crystal flowers, was at the Peters home at what was then 518 Bunkers Cove Road. For our "getaway car" from the reception, Joe Parrott let us borrow his shiny new 1957 Ford Thunderbird demonstrator. My brother Walt kept the TBird hidden out of sight so it didn't get adorned with shoes and cans on strings and JUST MARRIED!!! painted on with white shoe polish, and Walt drove it up just as we dashed out the front door and people threw rice and we were off for life together.
On June 25, 1958 our daughter Malinda was born, and four days later Navy Ensign and Mrs. Tom Weller celebrated our first wedding anniversary with the last slice of wedding cake and a glass of champagne.
Malinda, Joe, Tass, Nicholas, Ray, Kristen, Caroline, Charlotte.
TW
* Let the innocent choose Gosh Darn or Gol-Durn, but no Gator is innocent.
Linda was twenty years old and had to get parental consent to marry. I was 21, just graduated from the University of Florida and in ten days heading off to U.S. Navy Officers Candidate School, Newport, Rhode Island and GKW after that. Dating and going steady since she was a junior and I a senior at Bay High, we had been pinned since my freshmen year at Florida and engaged since Christmas 1956. Her father was stunned at our short engagement, protested that I had asked him if Linda and I could become engaged but nobody had said anything about marriage or a wedding, and was hesitant to sign the consent form. But my paranoia knew her mother, a native of Tuscaloosa and a graduate of the University of Alabama, was ever hopeful that some young man with an Alabama pedigree and the scion of a prominent Alabama family would ride up on his white horse. Any Gator with any sense at all knows you haven't never been able to trust nobody from Alabama and that won't never change, and I wanted to make GeeDee* sure no Charging Elephant came around courting as soon as my Lockheed Constellation lifted off the ground at Fannin Field, Panama City Airport.
So the wedding went forward. The wedding was in the -- church. The wedding reception, and wedding cake baked in Birmingham with beautiful spun sugar crystal flowers, was at the Peters home at what was then 518 Bunkers Cove Road. For our "getaway car" from the reception, Joe Parrott let us borrow his shiny new 1957 Ford Thunderbird demonstrator. My brother Walt kept the TBird hidden out of sight so it didn't get adorned with shoes and cans on strings and JUST MARRIED!!! painted on with white shoe polish, and Walt drove it up just as we dashed out the front door and people threw rice and we were off for life together.
June 29, 1957. Fifty-six years ago today.
On June 25, 1958 our daughter Malinda was born, and four days later Navy Ensign and Mrs. Tom Weller celebrated our first wedding anniversary with the last slice of wedding cake and a glass of champagne.
Malinda, Joe, Tass, Nicholas, Ray, Kristen, Caroline, Charlotte.
TW
* Let the innocent choose Gosh Darn or Gol-Durn, but no Gator is innocent.