Girls, This is a How a Lady Plays Hard to Get to Get What She Wants.

Ah, the romance of Hawaii.

Today’s Lady in Defiance is submitted by Mary Margaret Smith

Back in the early 50’s, my grandma was a young divorcee with an 8 year old

daughter by her first marriage, and my granddaddy was a young widower.

When they met, my grandma had taken a bookkeeping class at a local college

and her teacher recommended her to my granddaddy, who had recently returned

home from the war and started a furniture business. He hired her and they

soon began dating, often going out after work.

However, Burlington was a pretty small town at the time, and in a year or

two my grandma heard a rumor that, even though he was supposedly dating my

grandma exclusively, he was dating local schoolteacher on the weekends!

She found the rumor to be true, and without even saying anything to my granddaddy, she

decided to leave town. She had a sister who had moved out to Hawaii

several years before, so she packed up her whole home and life, and had all

her possessions shipped in crates to Hawaii. She and my aunt flew out the

following day.

My granddaddy figured out what had happened and managed to get hold of her

when she was in St. Louis for a night with an uncle of hers. He told her

he had broken up with the other woman and begged her to come back, but she

refused. She told him, “If you love me that much, you’ll have to come all

the way to Hawaii and get me!”

So, my grandma and her young daughter flew all the way to Hawaii. The day

after their arrival, my granddaddy appeared on her doorstep! He told her that he

had been a complete idiot and proposed right there. They were married in a

quaint little church in Hawaii two days later, and then turned right around and headed

back to North Carolina! In fact, they were married and left Hawaii before the

crates of all my grandma’s possessions had even arrived there!

My grandparents remained married the rest of their lives, and I really have

never seen two people more in love, but I’ve also never really heard a

story of a marriage so unique as this one! It’s also pretty scary to think

how close they came to losing each other forever, but whenever my

granddaddy told the story, he insisted that he would never have let that

happen. And up until his death a few years ago, my grandma would never

tell the story without jokingly reminding granddaddy how much he had goofed

up when he tried double-crossing her!

Mary Margaret Smith