A Love Story continued ...

A memorable Christmas to be sure, there have been others that stand out, but this will one will always be near the top of my Christmas memories, because it was the beginning of a fantastic ride. A big change was coming soon … we were rolling through our first year of marriage. I was a full-time student, part-time shoe salesman, basketball player and we were actively involved in our church. Another thing we faced was a growing college bill. So we made the big decision that I would sit out a year of school while we tried to see if there was anything we could do to either increase our income, get more help with college funds such as grants or lower the college costs.

If I did not return to school in the fall then we would have to sell our trailer and move, because “Trailerville” was for students only. Since neither of us would be taking classes we could not stay, but we had until the next semester. It began to look like we would stay in the area, establish our residency in the state and then be eligible for some state grants that would help ease the financial burden of the college costs.

We found an apartment and sold our trailer. Since we sold our trailer as furnished we had no furniture as we moved into our apartment. It was a brand new apartment community and we were the first to live in this apartment. We purchased a kitchen table and chairs at a garage sale. We got a used mattress from some friends and we bought a beanbag chair from my brother and sister-in-law. We took our television with us and that was how we furnished our 2 bedroom apartment. We slowly added a couple more pieces of furniture but our bed was a mattress on the floor and our dresser was boxes in the closet. We were young and thought it was great. We celebrated our first anniversary in our new, nearly empty apartment.

Jody was working at the college in the business offices and I was selling shoes and furniture at Montgomery Ward’s department store. We were definitely living the high life, or at least we thought it was special. We were involved in youth and children’s ministry at our church and enjoying both of those areas of service.

Our apartment was across the street from a Little League baseball park. So on many summer nights we walked across the street and watched kids we didn’t know play baseball. It was cheap entertainment and was good preparation for later in life sitting on bleachers watching our own children play soccer, basketball, volleyball, softball, baseball, football, wrestle, run track and cross country. All we knew at that time was that we didn’t want to be like many of the parents we observed in the stands. They were constantly yelling at their children, or other people’s children and occasionally yelling at the other parents not to mention the words directed toward the umpires. I can proudly say we did not become those parents. We did a lot of cheering at our children’s events but we refused to be one of “those parent(s)” where their own kids wished would not attend their games.

After several months we began to reevaluate our decision about sitting out of school. So we …