Aug. 25, 2006
 
ASSISTED LIVING: Warming Remembrances of Things Past
 
By Stewart Elliott
Scripps Howard News Service
 
If you have been reading this column for any length of time, you are aware that Wanda and I were married for 64 years before she left us just a year ago. I have no hopes of recovering from her loss, but maybe I can write about her now.
 
I first saw Wanda when she was a child of 3 or 4. Then we attended the same school for a few months; she as a first-year student while I was in the fifth grade.
 
My next clear memory of her was as a new high school graduate. My eyes must have popped. She had become a very feminine young lady. We went to a movie and held hands.
 
Wanda went to Mississippi to work for an uncle in a garment plant. But she was not about to escape me that easily. I borrowed my brother's Ford and drove down to ask her to marry me.
 
She seemed delighted with the idea, so I made another trip south to take her a ring.
 
The draft had just started and I planned to get my year's duty over before we were married. I went into the Army in April. Guess where the Army sent me? Camp Shelby, Miss. As I have told you, God walks around with his hand over me.
 
I saw her several times and she and her girlfriend came to visit.
 
It was the autumn of 1941. The attack at Pearl Harbor had not yet happened, but the war clouds were gathering and we both knew it was not likely I would be released at the end of my year's enlistment. We decided to go ahead and get married before they could ship me out.
 
I picked up Wanda and we hurried to Nashville, Tenn., only to find we could not get a marriage license that day.
 
Everyone was so helpful. They called Athens, Ala., and had wedding arrangements waiting for us.
 
We were a happy couple.
 
For two more years the Army kept me here helping to train recruits. As a master sergeant, I was allowed to live off the base. So Wanda joined me for a month or two.
 
The only room we could find in Alexandria, La., was a room over a tavern. All evening long they played "Walkin' the Floor Over You," the Earnest Tubbs hit of the season. We joked about that room the rest of our lives.
 
Our daughter was born Sept. 20, 1943, missing Wanda's birthday by two days.
 
I got to hold her for just a few minutes, then hurried back to the base before being shipped out to the Pacific. In Hawaii, I wrote poems for my wife and daughter.
 
When grandmother or someone else could baby-sit, Wanda worked as a long-distance telephone operator.
 
When I came home in the autumn of 1945, our charming little 2-year-old could call me "Daddy," and that was the start of a beautiful friendship. I started working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture doing soil conservation in Robinson, Ill.
 
We lived in cheap apartments, but Wanda never complained. She ironed for a neighbor for extra money -- wrinkle-fee clothing was still years away. My Chee-Chee, as I called Wanda when using a pet name, was a good student, completing the LPN course with high marks.
 
Above all, though, she was a good partner in life. She thought I knew everything and could do anything. She made me much better than I could have been without her. She proved she loved me with all her heart. Her love was a life-changing experience.
 
When I entered the room, her face lit up. How wonderful to be loved like that.
 
This world will never be the same without my Chee-Chee.
 
Stewart Elliott is a nursing-home resident who writes the column "Notes From a Nursing Home" for the Evansville Courier & Press in Evansville, Ind. Contact him at thepilgrimSE@hotmail.com
 
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