MY WEDDING DAY

by Danna Shirley

            Ronald Kline Shirley was one of those shy, intelligent, hands-on kinds of guy.  He was a high school dropout not because he couldn’t cut it but because school didn’t challenge him enough to keep his interest.  He had places to go and things to do; Alabama wasn’t the place and high school wasn’t the thing!  He received his GED with ease and worked for a hotel parking cars at night while attending trade school during the day; he rested somewhere in between.  With an education under his belt, he joined the Navy to see the world.  At age 18 he was the only ET (Electronics Technician) on his first ship, the USS Merrick.  If he had to tell the captain that some particular electronics repair couldn’t be done, on Ron’s word the captain would pull into port to get it done.

            At the same time, I was working for the Atomic Energy Commission and shared an apartment in San Pablo, California with Linda Autrey.  Ron’s ship came into dry dock for three months and he rented an apartment with five other sailors across from us, although there could be any number of guys living there at any given time. 

A couple of the sailors asked Linda and me if we would fix them a home-cooked meal if they bought the food. We fixed fried chicken with all the trimmings. After that we dated a few of them but after I met Ron, we dated each other exclusively.  Before the ship was to leave for Ron’s third tour in Viet Nam, he proposed saying that he wanted to look across the kitchen table at me every day for the rest of his life.  So what else could I do? I waited for him!

            It happened like this . . . when the ship returned to southern California after an eight-month deployment Ron got leave and hitchhiked to the Bay Area to see me.  We knew we were going to marry eventually but no plans had been made.  We had not even discussed when, where, what, or how; we only knew who.  When he arrived at my door and asked me to go to Alabama to meet his parents, I agreed and was ready to leave immediately.  He said, however, they wouldn’t understand if we traveled across country before marriage (much different than today’s couples), so we were Reno bound within hours.

            Ron got a buddy off the ship, George Fedderke, to be his witness.  Unfortunately, my best friend Cathy couldn’t take off work.  Leaving late on a Wednesday afternoon, we drove over Donner Pass through the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains.  At one point the weather was such that we had to purchase chains. Ron lay in the snow wearing only a sweater to put them on the tires.

            I was dressed in a two-piece cream colored suit (it was hard to find white in December), which my mom and I had bought in anticipation of my getting married soon.  If she’d only known I had planned to wear it to Reno, I’m sure she never would have bought it for me.  I was her third daughter to elope, even after promising that I would not follow in my sister’s footsteps. 

            We arrived in the wee hours of Thursday morning and waited for City Hall to open so we could get our wedding license.  Our next stop was a jewelry store for wedding bands and our final stop was Chapel of the Bells.  We said our vows, and with the marriage certificate signed and in hand, we drove back to the Bay Area.  It was December 19, 1968. 

            We spent one night together before Ron returned to San Diego and I to work with a plea to my boss to take two weeks off—at Christmastime—to meet Ron’s parents.  My supervisor in Visitor Control, Florence Morrison, already had a trip to Hawaii planned so my next boss up, Robert M. Geffel, relinquished his personal secretary to move over to our department and handle our work load with only two days training.  

            Friday night my parents put me on a plane to meet Ron in San Diego.  It was my very first plane ride…my “first” of a lifetime of “firsts” as Ron’s wife.  I remember crying the whole flight down.  Why?  I guess because I knew this was the beginning of leaving my parents, my safety net, my comfort zone and the only life I had ever known.  I also had the thought, “MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE???”

            Thinking about it now, I know we were very young, 20½ and almost 22, but I would elope with Ron all over again.  For thirty-four years I was just as happily married as anyone who ever had a church wedding; probably more so...