What Preston Was Thinking 70 Years Ago

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I have written about my Aunt Dot and Uncle Preston many times. On Sunday Ray and I had the privilege of celebrating with them at their 70th wedding anniversary party. Dot is my Daddy’s sister who was born four years after Daddy. Ray and I thoroughly enjoyed a glorious afternoon with their family and with my brother, niece, and several cousins. I was especially excited to visit with two of Daddy’s 26 first cousins on Mama Sue’s side, who were the children of Pa Jim and Mama Head’s 11 children, and also to get to see their sweet wives again after many years. On Sunday I called these cousins Kenneth Wayne and Clyde Junior, just as Mama Sue used to do, though they probably dropped Wayne and Junior long ago in settings outside the family. I used to enjoy being with their mothers, my Great Aunts Hattie and Hazel, who were two sisters married to Mama Sue’s brothers Clarence and Clyde, making Kenneth Wayne and Clyde Junior double first cousins.

Ray wisely asked Preston what he was thinking on September 2, 1955, as he was ready to walk down the aisle with Dot. Preston said, “I was thinking she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.” I can understand why. This is Dot’s senior picture that I always admired in Mama Sue and Daddy Leland’s dining room.

I’m sorry I didn’t ask Dot the same question. Surely, she would have said that he was the handsomest thing she had ever seen.

The church where I grew up after my family moved to Ashland City when I was almost four was brand new in 1955 when Dot and Preston got married. Though another couple had already married there in a simple ceremony, Dot and Preston were the first to have what we used to call “a big church wedding.”

Dot and Mama Sue posed for the traditional picture of the bride and her mother.

Daddy Leland walked Dot down the aisle.

Dot and Preston made a beautiful couple.

After the wedding, Mama Sue and Daddy Leland held the reception in their brand-new home with its pink kitchen.

And here they are 70 years later with Ray and me at their anniversary celebration.

The most precious part of the day for me was after the party when Ray told me what Preston had told him about what he was thinking 70 years ago, as I quoted at the beginning: “I was thinking she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.” Their joys and trials have been many, but what a love story.

There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
Four which I do not understand:
The way of an eagle in the sky,
The way of a serpent on a rock,
The way of a ship in the middle of the sea,
And the way of a man with a maid.
Proverbs 30:18-19

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