Before they were Mom and Dad they were Roena and Peck!

Before we came along, Mother and Dad actually had a life! These photos of them as teenagers were taken not long before they were married at the ages of 18 and 19. It wasn't an easy win for Dad. First he had to duel Neil Tippitt for Mom's hand. Fifty years later Neil told Mom that he'd always been in love with her. Acck! Her life might've been less hectic with Mr. Slicked-hair Neil, but alas, she was destined to choose handsome and charismatic Peck--and stick with him for over 75 years, even though, as she said once or twice,"It hasn't been easy!"

As I wrote in Daddy's eulogy, life wasn't easy and they never expected it to be, "but he tackled it with courage, style and wisdom. No one here can doubt his wisdom. Remember that before he was 20 years old, when as he would’ve said, we didn’t have enough sense to come out of the rain, he had picked out the prettiest, smartest girl in his world for himself, and asked her to marry him, and they stepped forward together into adulthood in the middle of the worst depression this country has known and embraced life. And man, was he right, for if ever there was a partner who was up to the task of living with him, and balancing him, it has been our dear Momma."

Mom told me that she had just finished business college, actually having been given her degree early because of her grades of all near 100, and since the Great Depression had begun,
her chances of getting a nice job she was trained for were nil, so when Dad asked her to go to Michigan with him, she accepted, figuring what else was she going to do. She told her parents he had asked her to marry him, and they had replied, "Whatever you want to do, Sweetie."

So now I'm hoping we can all contribute more of the stories they've both told us about their lives, before each other, together, and before we were born. These are the stories I don't want to lose!