This is Floyd Wynne with THE VIEW FROM HERE   2/22/05

In  today’s world one can consider it quite an accomplishment.

I’m referring to the fact that as of yesterday, Barbara and I have been married for fifty nine years.

            It doesn’t seem that long since we were married in a little church back in Minot, North Dakota.   Then we really didn’t plan for fifty nine years of marriage, we simply started out on building a life together.

            Our marriage had been on hold for most of the prior four years because of my stint in the U.S. Navy.   During many long months among most of the islands in the Pacific, letters kept us together.

            But come 1946 and February that changed…..and I think to the dismay of a number of our friends….we tied the knot.

            While both of us were working…..she at an insurance office….and me back in radio…..we managed to share homemaking chores, even to the point of my having to call her mother to find out how to prepare certain things.

            Not having an auto, I would get on the bus for my evening sports program or a play by play effort, as she was getting off.  

            Times were still a bit chaotic after the war, and we first lived in the basement area of one home…..later shared a residence with a teacher…and finally found ourselves living for a short time with her parents.

            It was all part of living and growing together.

            When the time came for a change……particularly after one North Dakota winter where it didn’t get above thirty below zero for about thirty days…..we made the move to Oregon.  

            By then we had acquired a 1941 Oldsmobile that used about as much oil as it did gas.   We loaded all our possessions ….all in cardboard boxes that filled the back seat….and headed West.

            The day after arriving and locating in an apartment on Eldorado….the station, KFLW sent me to Oroville to broadcast a Gem baseball playoff game.

It required a long visit to the local newspaper and some boning up on information about the league….but it all came off okay.

            Little did we expect at that time that our stop in Klamath Falls would be a lifelong visit.  But…;with the exception of five years as editor-publisher of a daily newspaper in Petaluma, California, it has been a great many years here.

            Both Barb and I view with some alarm events of today, but then I guess one has to charge it off to…a world that changes almost daily.

            But building a life meant raising two wonderful sons who have proven to be successful, sane members ofour society.   It also meant forays into the political field in some instances……but it has been a great time….all fifty nineyears of it.

This is Floyd Wynne and that’s THE VIEW FROM HERE.