Ruth and Jim Montgomery
March 8, 1947
Ruth: He was in the service when I was a teenager. He jumped at Normandy.
Jim: I was in the G Company, 506th parachute infantry – a paratrooper. I got shot through the right lung. The medic shook his head and says, ‘No need to take him. He’s not going to last very long,’ and my company commander was standing there, and he says, ‘Has he got a pulse?’ ‘Yeah, he’s got one but he won’t have it very long.’ My company commander says, ‘If he has one, we’ll take him.’ So that’w when they carried me out. Fortunately, I recovered without any bad disabilities.
Ruth: He came home from the service and was working at Republic National Bank, and he was the teller I was dealing with at the bank. I worked at Mobil Oil right out of high school, so I’d run over to the bank to make deposits. I guess he thought I had a lot of money.
Jim: I don’t recall it, but I’m not going to argue with it.
Ruth: He called to ask for a date; he had my number from my records at the bank. I was dating a lot of other guys at the time, one very seriously. The night we got engaged, the other boy came over and tried to talk me out of it. We started dating in November, and were engaged in December, married in March. It will be 61 years on March 8, 2008.
Jim: We purchased a small house out in Casa View, and she worked for Mobil Oil until she got pregnant the first time. We outgrew that house over in East Dallas, and we built this one. So that’s why we’re here. We came along with four kids, and they kind of kept her at home.
Ruth: For 25 years.
Jim: She wasn’t doing any work.
Ruth: (laughs) Any work? Four kids! But I wouldn’t take anything for the 25 years I stayed home with them. I went back to work in ’72, when my youngest was in ninth grade. I called the principal at Lake Highlands High School and asked if he had a job. I was secretary to six counselors. I was there 33 years, and I still probably would be if I wasn’t taking care of [Jim]. It was very hard to quit because I loved what I was doing, but when all of this started happening, I knew there was no way. He has dementia; he’s had four surgeries in two-and-a-half years; he has colon cancer; he has a pacemaker that had to be repaired recently. So 24-7 is what I do – look after him.
Jim: I think that our life together has been very good. We’ve had our differences, which I think were minor.
Ruth: No matter what happens, you try to work it out. It’s not to say that we didn’t have problems ever; that would be ridiculous. I think you have to realize that there will be differences, but you have to give and take and come to mutual agreements and try never to leave things unsolved. You have to realize that you’re two different people, and you just have to find common ground to work things out, and I think we’ve been able to do that.
Ben and Mildred Stephens
July 8, 1946
Ben: We first met in 1942, August the 29th in Houston. I lived in Dallas and went down to Houston to tell my sister goodbye because I was being drafted the 9th of September. She brought the nice little neighbor girl over.
Mildred: His sister lived right around the corner from us. She wanted to have somebody over to be with him, someone his age, so she invited me.
Ben: I took her down to the San Jacinto battlefield the next day. She paid my way up to the tower for 50 cents. I stole my first kiss that day, out there where Sam Houston captured Santa Ana in 1836. I wrote Mildred a letter and thanked her for the nice visit in Houston. I wrote her once a week, and she wrote me once a day in the Army. I was getting so many letters that one time, instead of mail call, they called it Stephens call. My military career covered about four years, and every time I had an Army vacation, she always met me at the training in Dallas whenever I got here. I didn’t know if I’d make it or not – you never know if you’re a soldier – and I saw her every time I could.
Mildred: He was very polite, and I just felt like he was the one, I guess, because I kept writing him and kept writing him and kept seeing him.
Ben: The war ended, Japan surrendered, and I immediately went to Houston and proposed marriage.
Mildred: We married at the church I had always gone to. We had a small wedding, just a few friends and a few of the family who could come.
Ben: I was a little nervous, I remember. I’d been through the war and everything else, but it was the first time I’d ever gotten married. We rode a bus down to Galveston for our honeymoon. They had just built Gaido’s hotel. She wore a bikini, but they called it a two-piece. She had quite a figure. She looked cute in her bikini.
Mildred: Oh Ben, stop.
Ben: In 1959, when her mother died, we went down to Amarillo to close out her mother’s house and found three long boxes of letters. Mildred had saved every letter I ever wrote her – probably 1,500 to 2,000 letters – and I said, ‘The kids are never going to read these,’ and I threw them away, and that’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in life. We have three girls, the first one born in Oak Cliff here in Dallas, the second born in Nacogdoches, and the third born in Lufkin.
Mildred: We had a child in each place we lived except for Amarillo.
Ben: On Jan. 29, 1964, I remember it well. It was her 42nd birthday, and we moved here in this house, and I said, ‘That’s it. We’re not moving anymore.’ Mildred and I have had the same family doctor for 36 years, gone to the same dentist’s office for 43 years, and I’ve gone to the same barber for 33 years. So I guess we’re pretty well established in the neighborhood. It’s been a good life. About 15 years ago, we went down to the San Jacinto batterfield again, and I told the woman that on our first date, she paid my way for 50 cents, and she said, ‘Well, you folks can go for free.’
Criss and George Stone
Sept. 19, 1948
Criss: My sister and his brother had been dating, and his big brother brought George up to my home – we lived in different towns – on one of his visits to take my older sister out. George invited me to go with them, and that’s how we met.
George: We went to Port Jervis, N.Y.
Criss: We went to a movie and stopped and had refreshments.
George: I don’t remember what movie. I don’t think half of us paid attention to the movie.
Criss: The other two got married shortly, so my sister is my sister-in-law. I was still in high school, so he and I dated.
George: I lived in Stroudsburg, Penn., and she lived in Milford, Penn., and about 35 miles separated the two of us, so I learned to drive that U.S. Route 209 blindfolded in this courtship.
Criss: I was just 18 when we married.
George: We were married in Milford, Penn., in the First Methodist Church.
Criss: We moved to Dallas, by choice, in 1953. The parents stood there with tears in their eyes, of course, because we took their little granddaughter away – just like we do now when ours move away.
George: We had been married four years, and our daughter Gail, by that time, was 2 years old.
Criss: It was really kind of exciting at that time to go to the big city, and I have never regretted it. We had two boys here, two Texans, in 1955 and 1959. One of them moved back to Lake Highlands, and I think that’s the best compliment a parent can receive.
George: We moved into this house 41 years ago.
Criss: In January 1966. This was a dirt road. There wasn’t even a street out here, and there were only a few houses. Now there are 500. We’re just staying as long as we can.
George: Just like a whole lot of people, we have our ups and downs and differences of opinion, but even when we’ve come to very opposites of opinions, we’ve never felt that the best way to get out of this was to get out of it.
Criss: When you married in those days, you took your vows very seriously. That was part of the vows – for better or worse.
George: At the beginning, through and now, we never felt that it wouldn’t last. Our ability to give and take is important. By being able to be flexible, we’ve overcome any differences, and for that matter, there probably weren’t that many major differences.
Criss: Or that important to begin with. Like getting that den painted. I’ve been working on it for 15 years.
George: But by the same token, it’s been a great and grand room for us all these years.
Criss: George doesn’t like to make changes.
George: George used all his make change powers to decide to come down here.
Criss: And didn’t have any left over.
George: I can make changes. I’ve changed everything but my hair.
Criss: We’re simultaneously different and alike in our way of thinking and living, our beliefs.
George: We celebrate our 60th anniversary next September.
Criss: We spent our youth playing a lot of tennis, and we each ruined our knees, so on our 50th we had knee replacements, and we didn’t do anything. But this time we will.
Jim and Frances Harbin
June 2, 1939
Jim: We met at a nightclub in the valley. A friend of mine and his wife were sitting at a table with Frances, and I walked in and went over to speak to him, and he introduced me to the girls at the table. I came over and asked her to dance.
Frances: I think it was in December, and we married the next June. Our favorite song is “If I Didn’t Care” by The Ink Spots. That’s our song. It was on the jukebox at our reception. [Later] when we finally were able to buy a car, there was one particular boy, he was from New York, and he wanted to rent that car every weekend. We didn’t have a radio, so Jim would make him put up his radio as collateral for renting the car. So we had a radio on the weekend.
Jim: Plus a little change.
Frances: Let me tell you, he loved to make money, but he was so generous with it. We had a teacher in our Sunday school department, and she had an opportunity to go to Mexico on a little mission trip, and she didn’t have the money to do that. So Jim paid her way and all of her expenses. And we had another friend who wanted to go to Brazil, and he paid her way to go to Brazil. He did mighty good things with money, including for me.
Jim: She was my main beneficiary, I’ll tell you.
Frances: I mean, the jewelry he’s given me…I didn’t have a diamond until we’d been married 25 years, and since that time I’ve gotten one every year.
Jim: She’s very generous with me, too, in things that she does for me and the way that she feels, so I can’t help but be generous for her. She sets me a good example.
Frances: He’s very thoughtful, very considerate. I’ve been down with my back for about two years, and he’s been better than any nurse we could have hired, so it works both ways.
Jim: Love the other one more than you love yourself. That goes for anybody. We just never fuss. She won’t fuss with me. I try to start a fuss, and she won’t pay attention to me.
Frances: I found out a long time ago that he’s a better fusser than me. I can’t win.
Jim: I enjoy her company still as much or more as I ever did. We play double solitaire at night. That’s our pastime during whatever time we have before we go to bed.
Frances: I’ll tell you the reason for that: He’s so much better at cards than I am. He whips me every time if I play against him, so I came up with the idea that let’s just each try to beat solitaire.
Jim: I love her more now than the day I married her, and I tell her that all the time, and she foolishly believes me.
Frances: (laughs) Well, I tell you, there are some things you just want to believe.
