Today in history was the start of something big

and, no, I’m not talking about D-Day in World War II in 1944 (though that was really, really big). I’ll let the history buffs tackle that one. I’m talking about something else altogether.

On June 6, in the Year of Our Lord 1958, two marriages occurred. One was real and one was only play-acting. The play-acting one took place on a fairly new but extremely popular soap opera called “As The World Turns” when Eve, I think her name was, finally married Dr. Doug Cassel, or Castle, or something. Later that afternoon, the real one occurred when my father married my stepmother in the Methodist Church in Coppell, Texas. Here’s the backstory:

In October 1957, after a long bout with cancer, my mother died. Several months later, through a co-worker of my Dad’s at the aircraft factory in Fort Worth where he was employed, Dad met the co-worker’s sister-in-law, Mildred H., in the spring of 1958. Dad was 52; Mildred was 43 and had been a widow for about a year following her husband’s heart attack. Dad and Mimmie (that’s what I eventually called her) knew almost immediately that they wanted to get married. But I was a senior in high school 30 miles from where she lived. So they decided to wait until I graduated to have their wedding. I graduated on May 19th and the next day my Dad and I moved to Coppell. Two weeks later, on June 6th--fifty years ago today--they tied the knot and left for a honeymoon in either Hot Springs, Arkansas, or Monterrey, Mexico. It happened so long ago I can’t remember. And I, uprooted from familiar surroundings, suddenly went from being an only child to being the middle one of five. But it was real life, not a soap opera.

Dad and Mimmie were married for nine years, until his death from pancreatic cancer in 1967. Mimmie later married for a third time to John F. and that marriage lasted thirty-three years until John's death made her a widow once again. Mimmie passed away in 2004 in Carrollton, Texas, at the age of 89.

Just about the only thing my mother and my stepmother had in common was that they both liked to watch “As The World Turns.” I have no idea how long Doug’s and Eve’s marriage lasted.