Celebrating the Marriage of Ladson and Billie Worley

This photo was taken in Brownwood outside of their first apartment while they attended Howard Payne College just after they were married September 4, 1949.

Ladson Worley and Billie Galloway were married early Sunday morning September 4, 1949 at the Baptist Church in Afton, Texas. Billie was given away by her uncle Jim since her father had passed away several years before. I was reminded of this with the passing of Jim's wife, Polly last month.

The following is an excerpt from one of Billie's stories from the beginning of their marriage.

On September 4, 1949, at 8:00 in the morning, we were married in the Afton Baptist Church, Afton, Texas. I had grown up in that church, and it had always been my desire to be married there. It was truly a Galloway-Worley wedding. A.T., his oldest brother performed the ceremony; Rogene, the one just younger than him was best man; my only sister, Dorthy, was bridesmaid; Freda, his only sister played the piano, and the only one who was not in the family was the Japanese girl, a college friend, who sang, My Dad’s brother gave me away.

The Saturday after our Sunday wedding, Ladson and I moved our belongings to 801 Booker Street, Brownwood, Texas. We had $40.00 to start the school year, pay the rent, buy groceries, and pay all of the incidental expenses which we knew would be coming up. The Lord had always provided for us, and we were confident that He would lead us to the right place to find jobs.

            But things didn’t work as we had planned. We thought that with both of us working we could live well and go to school at the same time. Never in my life have I walked so much as I did those next few weeks. Nobody needed any help in their business –neither men or women. Financial worries plus adjusting ourselves to married life could have been hazardous had it not been for our faith in our God. We always began our day by reading from the Bible, and talking to God in prayer, and we always closed our day the same way.

            As I look back to that time, I knew that we would get by somehow. Then my only desire was to finish college, and I felt in my heart that God would not send us children, and we would not have to drop out until we had completed that task which lay ahead of us –preparation for our life’s work.

            Fortunately, I had canned about four hundred jars of food, and we had brought a good supply of butter, eggs, corn meal and numerous other items from home. We had a varied diet except for milk and meat. I remember that from February until school was out that year that we didn’t have a drop of milk in our house except the little bit of canned milk which I felt was necessary for cooking purposes. Many times I have almost shed tears as I saw people buying meat for their cats and dogs, when I was hungry for meat, and I knew that there were many families in that city who had much less to eat than we had.

            We borrowed enough money from a neighbor in October for Ladson to buy a cotton sack, and he got a ride out to pull cotton in the afternoons. I was determined that I could do anything he could, so when he got his first pay check, we bought me a sack, too. About that time, A.T., Ladson’s oldest brother, bought an old 1939 model Chevrolet and gave it to us. We affectionately named the wreck of a car, “Eli.”  “Eli” was a life saver, because with a mode of transportation we were able to keep a place to pull cotton until Thanksgiving.

            Rogene, Ladson’s brother who had acted as best man in our wedding was a freshman at Howard Payne that year. We still laugh about the times when we would start home dead tired from the cotton fields, and “Eli” would delight us with a flat tire, or something worse. I trusted “Eli”, though, just as long as Ladson was at the wheel. Surely the Lord was watching over us or we would not be alive today from riding that wreck.

            We were able to save enough money to buy groceries and pay the rent until Christmas. Then we borrowed money from one of my cousins to pay the rest of our tuition, etc. before time for mid-term examinations.

Our relatives and friends worried a lot about us, I know. They just knew that we would starve to death, but we fooled them.!

            All of that time our love had grown and grown until words cannot express how we felt toward each other. I had thought that I really knew and loved Ladson before we married, and I did, but even today I can look back over these few years, and I realize that our love has grown an indescribable amount.

I am so thankful that she wrote these thoughts down so that we can share them today. By the time I was born I had no idea they had been so poor at the beginning of their marriage. I still find it hard to believe that both of them have gone on to heaven, but as each of us know time marches on.

                                                                                               Daryl