Treasures

I'm not sure when we inherited this framed certificate of Mother and Dad's wedding. They were married before District Judge, Rob. R. Reid in Lincoln on October 14, 1920. Dad's sister Anna and Mother's brother Bert Walker were the attendants. I suspect we received this after Vivian passed on and Sandy probably felt we should have it. I'm sure Mother would have talked more with Vivian about their wedding than what she or Dad ever mentioned to me. The writing on the certificate is in Mother's hand which I'm sure she did at a much later date as the original faded. Dad's birth date was October 18, 1896 so he would have been 4 days short of being 24. Mother was born on August 7, 1900 so she would have been 20. I found it interesting that I was 20 days short of my 24th birthday when Elaine and I got married. Vivian wasn't born until over 3 years after the folks were married and I know of no reason for their wedding at that particular date. They did live with Dad's folks for a short time.

I also "found" this box of "sermons" that we had saved from Rev. W. Graham Smith, D.D at Fairlington Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, VA. Rev. Smith was from Ireland where he received his early degree before coming to the US. He was a scholar and excellent preacher. We became Presbyterians in moving to Virginia with Fairlington Church across the street from where we lived. They had an excellent youth program and with 4 youngsters, it was a natural. We continued our membership and active involvement through two household moves. Rev. Smith always provided a single spaced, 4-5 page copy of his weekly sermon. He came to the Church a couple years after we joined and was still there when we came back to Nebraska in 1980. What surprised me is that we have copies of his sermons well into the '80's that had been mailed to us.