Standing the Test of Time celebrates African Americans marriages of more than 30 years while providing a rare opportunity to glimpse in to the lives of relationships that work! The stories are riveting, inspiring and filled with warmth and wisdom. They are love stories with a purpose. Deep and meaningful marriages are one the most rewarding experiences life may offer. Unfortunately, most of us have little knowledge of the tools needed to make relationships work. We're usually guided by our parents' relationships, girlfriends, homeboys or previous experiences which may lead to more failure than success. We spend a life time reacting responding, and rebounding from mistakes and misguided intentions that have caused us pain and frustration. The twenty phenomenal couples featured in Standing the Test of Time, share honest and intimate insight into their relationships to reveals valuable life lessons in love, forgiveness, communication, building a family and growing together. Wisdom gleaned from these African American elders is both intuitive and significant. "A lot of people get married because they are in love. The goal is not to be in love - but to love". -Hattie Wilson, Standing the Test of Time

Standing the Test of Time

LOVE STORIES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ELDERSBy Julie Rainbow

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Julie Rainbow
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4678-5642-3

Contents

PREFACE............................................................................................vii1 Looking for Peace and Truth—HATTIE AND RALPH WILSON........................................32 Our History Was Parallel—DOROTHY AND HOLMAN EDMOND.........................................113 Becoming Whole—EVA ANDVAN BIRD.............................................................194 The Best of Friends—JEAN AND LESTER SLOAN..................................................255 Straight Up and For Real—BETTYE AND WILLIAM BOZEMAN........................................336 Believing in a Being Greater than Ourselves—IRENE AND JOSEPHYARBROUGH......................417 Building a Marriage—AURETHA AND JETHRO ENGLISH.............................................498 Good and True Friends—RENA AND RUDY ENNIS..................................................579 Evolving Together—SYLVIA AND ROBERT BOZEMAN................................................6510 We Are in This until the End—BRENDA AND AARON TURPEAU.....................................7111 Respect Each Other as Individuals—PATRICIA AND GEOFFREY HEARD.............................7912 Blind Date—PAULINE AND CHARLES COFFEY.....................................................8713 Through Thick and Thin—MARY AND RUPERT FEREBEE............................................9514 Give and Tak e—BERNESE AND ARCHIE MEYER...................................................10115 Weathering the Storms—JERI AND ADELL MILLS................................................10716 Ready for Commitmen t—LOUISE MCKOY AND GEORGE SHIPMAN.....................................11517 Sunshine and Shadow s—EVIVIAN AND LOUIS WILLIAMS..........................................12118 May Your Way Be Smoothed and Brightened—DOROTHY BEARD AND PAUL MCGIRT.....................12919 Understanding the Possibilitie s—VERA AND THAD TAYLOR.....................................13520 Actions Speak Louder than Words—DOROTHY AND CLEVELAND LASSITER............................141

Chapter One

Looking for Peace and Truth

"Most people get married for the wrong reason. Something outside of you cannot sustain your life because what you need is on the inside."

"Hattie! Hattie, the telephone!" Hattie recalls hearing. "I knew it was Ralph because he was the only person that ever called me at college. You were `hot stuff' if somebody called you, and when he called, he was always somewhere different. Because he traveled a lot, I began to fantasize that this rich boy was going to get me out of this small town. He traveled and that was appealing to me."

"In the beginning I didn't have any particular affection for Hattie," Ralph admits. "I did for her, the same as I had done for my sisters. It was my pattern. I had sent my two sisters to school before I met Hattie. She was in school trying to `make it,' so if I could help her with the money I was making, I would. It wasn't a strain."

"At first, I didn't like him. He had just gotten out of the service, and one day a friend and I were walking down Duke Street in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This fella comes up and offers to buy us a drink. I was horrified that somebody would offer to buy me a drink or even think that I would drink alcohol. That was really horrifying to me, so I didn't like him because of that. At the time I was nineteen. To me, he didn't respect me. He talked all the time and always had a camera around his neck. The second time I remember seeing him was at church. He threw his hat in my lap, which was a sign that he wanted me to be his girl. I didn't want to be branded as anybody's girl. He wasn't my boyfriend," states Hattie adamantly.

"I threw the hat in her lap because I didn't want to put it on the seat," Ralph laughs.

"Soon after the church incident, he started calling me at college, Cheyney," Hattie continues. "I really didn't pay him that much attention, even though he was calling."

"After a while he grew on me and I knew he liked me. He had excellent manners, was always attentive, opened doors for me, and all that `good stuff,' which I wasn't accustomed to. I read about it in books, but the people were always white. I used to read a lot and back then blacks couldn't go to the public library, so whenever I would get a dime I would buy these `Street & Smith' love stories."

"As for manners, I was raised in a house in a house full of women. My mother didn't know, but since my mother knew she didn't know, she copied the people where she worked. She would copy what she saw and heard on the job," Ralph explains." By this time, I knew I liked Hattie, and we began to communicate more."

"I liked Ralph, too, but I didn't know whether I really wanted to get married. Finishing school was my goal. However, he continued to pursue and bought me a platinum set of rings. I asked him to take those rings back, because I had to finish school. As a senior I needed the extra money to graduate and the rings were expensive. He took them back and bought another ring. He didn't buy a set, he bought me one ring. After we had gotten the license, I decided I didn't want to get married, so I gave him back the ring. He rolled up the receipt for the license, put the ring around it and threw it away."

"She didn't want, I didn't want it," Ralph insists.

"After giving it some thought, I decided I liked him enough to marry him. One Saturday morning I left campus, met Ralph in Westchester, and we went to Maryland to get married, in Elkton, Maryland. We got married in Maryland, because we didn't need a blood test. We went to the minister's house, paid ten dollars, and got married. There were three or four couples ahead of us. When the minister was marrying them, he would look out the window. I said, `Uh-uh, we're not doing it like this.' When our time came I told him, `I'm pulling down these shades, so when you marry me I don't want you looking out the window to see how many ten dollars are coming in that door, because I don't intend to do this but once. I want you to give us your full attention.' I told the minister, `When you say `le us pray,' wait until we kneel and then pray over us. Don't start praying, no, no, no, we must kneel first.'"

"I wasn't paying attention to him," Ralph offers.

"He took Ralph in the kitchen and told him, `Don't marry that girl because she's too bossy.'"

"It was too late then," Ralph laughs.

"After we got married, we took the bus to his mother's house. She cooked spaghetti. He was sitting there drinking lemonade and looking at me. I'm eating and he's staring. His mother is upset because he's not eating, so she goes outs and buys calf's liver, his favorite, and he didn't eat that either," recalls Hattie.

"I didn't need any food, because when you have a jewel, you enjoy the jewel. I was enjoying the jewel," Ralph says. "I was too busy to eat."

"Shoot, I was eating, because when you're in college, you look forward to some good food, and I was going back to school the next morning," Hattie continues. "I had two more weeks in college and seniors had to be on campus for Sunday school."

"We got married and didn't have a honeymoon," says Ralph.

"Though we didn't have a physical honeymoon there was this point in time where the relationship changed. Being head over heels was over; we had to get down to some serious...