Well, I had heard a rumor in the church we attended, that there was a family moving to Arizona that had 10 children. I was excited about meeting some new friends.
On June 20th, we had a Sunday school picnic, and this new family had just arrived in Tucson, so someone invited them to come. The family arrived with the 5 out of 10 children who had moved out with them. Our youth group spent the afternoon together and later went to a swimming party at someone’s home. One of the new family members came along. This was the man that I would someday marry.
At a later time we had another youth group party, at someone else's home. That is when I started to talk to Larry. We found out we had birthdays in the same month, and were born only four days apart. We also found out that we both were interested in computers. At that time I was going to school for computer programming, and Larry had just finished schooling for computer programming. So we had a lot in common.
Since I had plans to go out with my friends to the movies, and since Larry was celebrating a birthday and had a brand new car, I got the idea it would be fun if I invited him to come along. He accepted. There were four girls and one guy in the car. He wanted me to ride up in the front seat.
After that night, we started going out on our own and we were engaged on Valentines Day in 1971, and then on September 17, 1971 we got married.
Since we've been married we have two girls and two boys. We have 8 Grandchildren. Larry has a stepson that he has lost track of. But in July of 2009 he got in touch with him. He has 8 children which double our grandchildren to 16. And also we have two great grand children too. From his son's family.
May I add that in that same year, there were 10 couples that got married in our church including us. Nine of those couples are still married yet. This is including Larry's sister and her husband who just celebrated their 40th on April 30th.
Thank you for doing this for us.
Thelma
