Peggy and I got married in 1985. I’ll be generous and simply say Peggy’s parents were not thrilled with the idea.
We were both still in school. She had three semesters remaining as an undergraduate and I had four quarters of law school to complete. Both of us would finish in August of the following year. Her parents really wanted us to wait a year until we had graduated, but we had already waited two years longer than we wanted to wait.
Their reasoning was that Peggy would not finish school if we got married. Again, I think their reasoning was that they did not want her to get married to me. Otherwise, their fear showed a real misunderstanding of their own daughter. Nothing was going to stop her from graduating, not even the threat of withholding tuition money. In the end it was an empty threat — they paid for her entire education, and we were very thankful to them for that.
Marriage was actually a real boon to her grades. When we were dating we would stay out too late just because that was the only way we could spend time together. Once we were married we could go to bed at a normal hour since I didn’t have to take her home.
In the three semesters we were married she had a 4.0 GPA. It almost made up for the fact that I had almost flunked her out of college as a freshman, but that is a story for another time.
Entering the summer of 1986 Peggy needed fifteen hours to graduate. Baylor only allows students to take twelve hours in the summer. I had already been offered a job in Dallas starting on September 2, so if she could only take twelve hours she would have to drive back and forth between Dallas and Waco for a semester to take one class (this was in the days before online classes were an option — “online” didn’t exist yet).
Peggy went to the Dean of the business school and asked for an exception. He graciously allowed her not only to take fifteen hours but to substitute a class for another required class that was not available in the summer. Undeserved grace, but it does help when you have a 4.0 GPA in your major.
As I was sitting in the house today watching it rain (and rain and rain) and watching the reports of flooding here in Baton Rouge, the pictures below popped up as memories. And generated a million other memories.
Peggy graduated from Baylor University with a Bachelors degree in Business Administration thirty years ago today. In some ways it seems impossible that it was thirty years ago. In other ways it seems impossible that it was only thirty years ago.
Her parents were wrong about her. And me. But they made it all possible.
Peggy did the rest.
