My Grandma, Marie Jensen, insisted that she would never accept an engagement ring in the mail. “Why I would ever think that I would be the recipient of a diamond in the mail, I don’t know, but I said I would never accept one.”
That is, until the mailman appeared on her porch in tiny Mapleton, Utah, handed her a box and said, “There’s your engagement ring.” Her high school sweetheart, Harold Whiting had sent her a diamond.
And not just any diamond. It was a beautiful diamond ring set in platinum with seven smaller diamonds surrounding it. My Grandpa had moved away from his small Utah home in 1930 to attend graduate school in New York City. After not many months, he went to a musical, “Blossom Time,” and came home convinced that he did not want to be lonely any longer. He missed Marie enough to send a letter home telling her that he’d like her to come to New York and share his life. The “key hangs behind the door, and I will get home at 6:00 P.M,” he wrote.
Documenting the Story of the Romance
I loved hearing the stories of my Grandma and Grandpa’s long-distance romance, their engagement, and their “4-year-honeymoon” in New York City during the Great Depression. It was a story she told often. Late in September of 1989, I hauled a video camera and my 2-year-old son to their home to document the story on video. It’s a poor recording–bad lighting, insufficient audio, but it’s all we have. It documents the fact that their romance lasted their entire lives. It documents the statement he made on many, many occasions, that “The best decision I ever made was when I married your Grandma.”
The VHS video recording sat in a drawer for 28 years, and this fall, I decided to see if I could transfer the old VHS tape to a digital format and attempted to re-edit it using new software I’d received as a Christmas gift from my husband. Grandma was an expert family historian. She shot dozens of black and white photographs with her “Brownie” camera to help document their New York Adventure. She developed the film and printed the photos in her own photo lab underneath her basement stairs. Next, she carefully added the names and dates on the back of each photo. That made it possible for me to add some historical photos to the narrative from the video.
I love the fact that I can still hear their voices, see them laugh together, watch him sitting in his favorite leather armchair listening to her while she tells the story. I hope future generations will find something here to help them connect to Grandpa and how and why he loved this beautiful, dark-haired farm girl.
Documenting your Own Family Stories
Here’s the takeaway I’d like you to get from this:
- Take one hour to make a video or audio recording of your own parents or grandparents telling about their romance
- Print a few family photos now and then and make sure you write names and dates on the back
- Share these records digitally so that other family members can access them
- If you need some help with question prompts for good family stories, I have written journal prompts to help you. Order any of the journals from your favorite bookstore (*affiliate link).
