Janitor Shirley

August **, ****

I’m going out of the order I’d promised, but it seems right to me.

My parents were married on Labor Day of 1956. They had met a couple years before that, not sure of the exact year. George had wrangled that Naval Academy appointment for Pat, as I mentioned in the last installment, and of course in reality Pat had done his part by doing the things good universities look for, maintaining good grades and the like. So he became a freshman midshipman some time in the early 1950's, and left for the academy in the summer of whatever year it was, and didn’t come home until Christmas break.

I guess Pat had a friend from home named Carolyn Kriegler. She had become a sorority sister of Shirley’s at Fairmont State, and Pat had gone along somewhere with her, on his Christmas break, where she introduced him to Shirley. As you’ve probably been told, their first date was Christmas Eve, and they went roller skating at that place down in Hepzibah...the building is still standing and for years it was a church, It’s now either a church or has been turned into apartments. Famously, Pat asked her to marry him on that first date, and she accepted, but said he would have to finish the academy first. Oh, I forgot to mention something else you probably know– Shirley had been double promoted twice during her schooling in Shinnston, and so she finished high school at 16, and then rushed thru Fairmont State in three years, and so effectively graduated from college and began teaching high school at age 19. At this point, the point of the famous first date, I think she was still in school, however she was light years ahead of Pat, who was never double promoted and who had taken an extra post-graduate year at Riverside in preparation for the Naval Academy, and had piddled around at Cornell University for a semester (I’ll never figure that one out; I mean, where it fits time-wise into all this), so even though she was about a year younger than he, she was very much ahead of him in her education.

Anyway, the first date lives in the lore of the Stanton family, so I’m sure you’ve all heard the story from Nana. One odd thing is that in the course of driving all over the countryside that night they picked up Bob Watkins, Rich and Annie’s son, who was hitch hiking somewhere or the other. Bob was a wild one, like his dad. I guess he would’ve only been 14 or so at the time.

Well, as you know, Pat decided he couldn’t be without Shirley and so quit the Naval Academy after his first year. What is hard to fully imagine is the effect this had on George. Pat had just screwed up all his well laid plans. So anyway, George agreed to let him live with them at the house up on Madison St., but informed him that he, George, had secured Pat a free engineering education, which he had thrown away, and so if he was going to go to Fairmont State he could find a way to pay for it himself.

So Pat worked his way through Fairmont State being an orderly at Fairmont General Hospital. They don’t have orderlies at hospitals anymore– the position is sort of that of half janitor and half CNA or LPN. Orderlies did a lot of nasty cleaning up. And this is how Pat got through Fairmont State.

I don’t think he ever “walked”. He graduated in the summer of 1956. And he got his draft notice the same week. So he told Shirley it was about time they got married, before they shipped him away to God knows where. She agreed. He had fulfilled his end of the bargain. So they were married Labor Day weekend. Shirley claims her father offered them $1000 if they would just run away and get married, rather than go through all the complicated and female dominated machinations that weddings often involve. But Shirley was having none of it. You’ve seen all the wedding pictures. If not, or if you don’t remember them, we will pull them out. It appears to have been a nice affair.

Poor Pat had spent two years at a military high school and then a year at the academy, and was about as done with the military as he could be. But now he had two more years to serve. He was encouraged by the brass to go in for officer’s training, because he had a wealth of military experience already, and was a college graduate, but this would’ve extended his obligation by another couple of years, and he wanted out as quickly as possible. He was stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia, and Shirley went with him as soon as she was able. However when it was found that she was going to have me, Pat insisted she go home to have the baby, because he had little trust in or faith and confidence in military doctors. I guess he had to have a tooth pulled sometime before that, and they had pulled the wrong tooth.

Pat was assigned to the military police. He served his two years and then got out. When I was born Shirley was living with Lena up in Shinnston. He hitch hiked up to West Virginia from Georgia and arrived just before I was born (St. Mary’s Hospital in Clarksburg– long since torn down). Within a few months he was out of the army and got his first job at First National Bank in Fairmont, which is now WesBanco. This was 1958. I think he was making $3000 a year, which was a big improvement over the army.

Well the next installment will indeed be about Lena and the Victors.

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