Chapter Thirty-Four To San Diego and Beyond

Chapter Thirty-Four
To San Diego and Beyond


Ann and the crew moved to San Diego I believe in the early part of 1985. She started out living with her oldest sister Jean. We kept the relationship going by telephone and letters. That’s right letters, snail mail. Email and cell phone texting wasn’t in yet. Early on in our courtship, Brad and I drove down to San Diego and we took Ann, Eric, Jennisha and Eddie to the Ruben E Fleet museum in Balboa Park. The museum featured two things. It had a IMAX like theatre in which we saw some kind of space film. It also had a hands on science exhibit designed for children and youth. We had a great time there and everyone seemed to get along fine.

At the time, Ann was in a bank management program and in connection with that training program she had to make trips to the Los Angeles area. On one such trip she was staying over in a hotel down by the beach. It happened to be at the time Brad was graduating from high school. So, after the graduation ceremony Brad and I went to the beach, picked up Ann and went to dinner. Another opportunity for Ann and Brad to get to know each other better.

Well, after many phone calls, letters and trips to San Diego a major milestone was reached. I had been attending both the English and the French congregation. I was pretty busy attending meetings, participating in the ministry school and field service for both congregations, but it kept me out of trouble. Anyway, the summer of ’85 I was going to attend the French District Convention in Florida, but I changed my mind and spent the vacation time in San Diego. By this time Ann and the kids had moved into an apartment and I stayed over in a motel not too far away. Again my memory is a little hazy here and I don’t remember which of the following two events occurred first. Ann and I had gone to Mission Beach to walk along in the sand. We sat down in the sand and talked a while and then, since we were already sitting I didn’t have to kneel, I proposed to her. She accepted. Now here’s the second event which may have been the first event. We went to a shopping mall, I believe it was the Spring Valley Mall, and picked out the rings. I was rather partial to a set of rings in which the engagement ring had both a diamond and two rubies. Ann liked them too. Unfortunately a couple of years ago, someone broke into our apartment here in Pasadena and stole them.

After Ann accepted my proposal we began to make wedding arrangements. We decided to get married the following November. We decided to get married in the Kingdom Hall of Ann’s congregation. Ann made most of the arrangements for the wedding. Even though it was a couple of hours drive from LA, a large number of friends from my congregation came to the wedding and reception in San Diego. So all together it turned out to be quite a nice size group sharing in our wedding ceremonies. Ginger was able to make the wedding, but Gary and Dad were not able to attend.

Unfortunately we were not able to take a honeymoon trip. On the wedding night we stayed at Ann’s apartment. Eric, Jennisha, and Eddie stayed with Jean as I remember. However, Brad had his own special event connected to our wedding night. I had driven my car down to San Diego; so, we needed to get two cars up to Pasadena. Brad drove my car up loaded with wedding gifts to our new rented house on New York Drive. That seems simple enough, right? Except on the way up to Pasadena, he had a flat tire and of course the spare was buried under a trunk load of gifts. He did finally make it. Once again, thank you, Brad. Our honeymoon consisted of having a few days in our new home, just the two of us. I had been living in the home for about a month before the wedding; so, my furniture and things were already there. After the wedding we had to pack up Ann’s furniture and things, including her full length baroque like mirror which has been with us through thick and thin and move them to the new home.

After our few days of just the two of us, we not only moved the furniture up from San Diego, but we also brought Eric, Jennisha and Eddie to their new home. And so began our adjustments to the new family arrangements. It was a change of environment for the kids, but they had lived in the Pasadena/Altadena area before. However, now they had to adjust to a new man in the family arrangements. When Ann and I got married mixed racial marriages were not common. We were both well aware of the looks we got in most places we went except at the Kingdom Hall. But now, almost twenty-five years later things have changed a lot. Either we don’t get as many looks as we use to or I’ve gotten to a point of not noticing them. Mixed racial marriages are much more common today; they even show mixed couples in commercials. In our congregation we currently have six mixed marriages, and they’re not all African-American and White. We have African-American and Hispanic and also African-American and East Indian. But when we got married the mixed marriage did mean that the kids had to make some adjustments due to it. One thing that helped was a couple from Ann’s former congregation in Altadena, James and Marsha Weems. Their marriage was a mixed marriage and they had been married for several years when I met them. They had six kids and two of them were close to Eric and Jennisha’s ages.

We had a lot of good experiences along with some challenging ones there are New York Drive, but more about that in the next chapter – San Simeon to San Diego.