December 22, 2010 my husband's parents 69th wedding anniversary.  Pictured here are their son (and his wife me),  grandson and great-grandsons.  Quite a legacy when you know the way they started out.

In 1938 Jack  was medically rejected by the Navy because he didn't have good chest expansion.  He went home and stretched intertubes.  He was a skinny guy and in 1939  he was accepted into the service.
Jack came home a few times on leave. Once Dorothy met him in Boston and stayed at a YWCA and thought they were going to get married so she brought her best dress and her bible.  But he didn't ask and they didn't get married.  She went home angry.  She admits she dated a little.  But Jack never admitted to dating anyone but Dorothy.

December 22, 1941, a meer few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jack was again home on leave and ask Dorothy to marry and she agreed.  In Wichita, Ks. they tried to marry at a justice of the peace or a judge. This establishment wouldn't or couldn't marry them. Dorothy realized she didn't want to marry this way and told Jack that if he would find a proper church and minister she would marry.  Jack made arrangements and they married in the chapel of the Methodist Church of Wellington, Ks.  Another couple were their only guests. Dorothy wore her best dress. It was black.  A snow storm struck that night. Jack had to return to Boston and  his ship the USS Leary.  He tried to make arrangements.Was almost arrested for being AWOL. But the ship set sail without him.  He traveled aboard another ship that eventually returned him to the USS Leary.  

Dorothy settled into the life of a sailor's wife.  She lived at home with her parents and worked at a photography studio.   One year at Christmas time Jack came into port in Boston Massachusetes. He wouldn't be in port long enough to travel to Ks. Dorothy's boss couldn't be without help during the holidays, the busiest photography season of the year. She cried to her father.  He ask her which was more important: her job or her husband?  "Well, of course my husband is most important"!   She told her boss that she had to see he husband!  He said, okay but when you return we will work night and day until we are finished.  Dorothy proudly reports  "that's just what we did"!

The USS Leary, a destroyer, was launched March 6, 1918.  She was patrolling waters North of the Azores  December 24, 1943.  Jack was a Gunners Mate.  The USS Leary took three torpedoes from a German submarine. Ninety-seven men were lost. Seventy-nine survived. Jack floated many hours in  buoyed netting. In the middle of the night, nearly losing  hope, they were rescued, on Christmas Day.

In Kansas, Dorothy did not hear the news for nearly a week.  She spent a  harrowing two days worrying about her husband.  Then he called.

Jack moaned about the tailor fitted uniform that went to the bottom of the sea.  Dorothy tells of the sweater she knitted that also was lost.  Many years later, Jack attended a survivors reunion of the USS Leary and met the man that pulled him out of the water.  "I was going down for the third time and he lifted me up onto the rigging."

Jack was eventually discharged.  Dorothy and Jack bought Dorothy's family's funeral home and together they ran the Frank Funeral Home in Wellington, Ks. for many years. In 1982 Jack and Dorothy retired to Florida and lived a long full life of retirement.  Now in their 90's they have recently moved to Oklahoma City to a retirement community. 

Oh the stories they can tell!