They met and married in Wenatchee, Washington.
Loren Lloyd Arnett painted houses for a business owned by his brother-in-law
and learned the automobile upholstery trade.
Mafie Marie Rosencrans worked as a nanny for the children
of the minister of the local Christian church.
They met, I've been told, at a high school basketball game.
Lloyd was quite a ladies man, handsome devil that he was.
He was only 22 when he married Marie,
but he'd been engaged three times before.
Was it her sweet beauty that captivated him?
Her kindness and compassion?
I wish I had asked this kind of question when I had the chance.
They married in June 1922.
Their first child, my father, was born about three years later.
When Lloyd's father died in 1928, he and Marie
and my dad and his baby sister
moved in to his parents' home to help take care of his mother.
After Mary Biggs Arnett died in 1937,
Lloyd and Marie became the owners of the house.
Dad took the $18.75 mortgage payments to the bank
when he was a boy.
Now he wonders how his parents managed to scrape
that much money together each month during the Depression.
Lloyd worked a variety of jobs to provide for his family:
painter, carpenter, shipyard worker,
streetcar conductor, furniture and car interior upholsterer.
He profited from the New Deal, as it provided him a job
during the Depression years,
but was a steadfast Republican all his life.
He was a pillar of his local church and held tightly
to a rather conservative religious faith.
But I remember him most as a loving grandfather
who loved to rock his grandchildren
and sing to us when we were little.
I remember him carefully tending his rose bushes.
I know it was because of him that my grandmother
cooked both turkey and ham on every Thanksgiving
and Christmas because Grandpa didn't like turkey.
Marie also worked, both inside and outside her home.
One of her jobs was cooking at the Y in Portland, Oregon.
She was a marvelous cook and baker
and her kitchen was always filled with delightful scents
and conversation, because for the most part,
that's where the adults hung out.
She lived for 23 years after her husband died,
much of it in the home they'd lived in as young marrieds
with her mother-in-law.
Marie had a marvelous sense of humor
and was much more flexible
than her husband had been.
She, too, was a lifelong church member
but I suspect she was more in tune
with the compassionate God
of the New Testament than the vengeful God of the Old.
She was born before the Wright Brothers first flew
and lived to see men walk on the moon.
And she took it all in stride, with grace and excitement.
When she heard a story that surprised her,
she'd always say, "Lands' sake!"
for reasons I never understood.
Neither Lloyd nor Marie had a lot of formal schooling,
but all three of their children, a son and two daughters,
went to college. In keeping with the family's emphasis on faith,
their son pursued a divinity degree and became a minister.
Both daughters married (and later divorced) ministers.
The imprint of parental faith was strong.
For more Sepia Saturday posts,
(Thanks for hosting, Alan!)
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