In this video clip, Mildred tells how she and Harold got acquainted, and how they maintained their relationship even though they lived across the country from each other for 11 years.
Grandma (born Mildred Stout) always told us that she and Grandad (A. Harold Votaw) had started going together back in the first grade, and had known ever since then that they would marry. But we never heard the details of that story.
But now, from the pages of their wedding book, we get the whole story. In their own handwriting! Both of them wrote, taking turns, one paragraph at a time.
Their signatures appear on the first page of the wedding book.
On the back of this picture is written “Where romance began ‘way back’ in 1909 – Franklin School.” The photo was taken in 1931, when Mildred and Harold paid a visit to Wichita Kansas, and stopped in front of the school where they became friends during the first grade.
This picture was taken the day after their engagement was announced.
If you have a big screen, click on the pages below to enlarge them. If not, the text has been reprinted below.
Here is the text, if you need it.
MILDRED: We were only six, Harold and I, when we first met in Wichita Kansas, September 1909. We recited our first lesson together in the primer at old Franklin School. We were sweethearts from the first. At school in all our games we would choose each other for partners.
HAROLD: We were a case alright. Of course Midge was always a little shy and reserved as good little girls should be.
And Harold so bashful he only looked at me out of the corner of his eye but that was enough to make me fall hard.
Well anyway – Midge wouldn’t walk home from school with me for a long time. She made me trail along ten or twelve feet behind – all the way home. But I don’t do that now – No Sir!
One evening I wanted to walk behind him so I hid behind a lilac bush and he knows the rest.
I hid in a hay mow once too. But getting back to dear old Franklin School, some of our classmates took big delight in decorating the sidewalks with such signs as this (heart with M.S. + H.V.). It made me so happy and proud – but Midge, I think, outwardly tried to shun this teasing. It made her blush though – I know.
Really inside my heart I loved it. We had a lovely primer teacher. Her name was Miss Preston. One lovely time I remember while we were in the first grade was the date with my beau to go sled riding. I made him think I was cold so I could walk close to him. Such fun we had!
My party on my 7th birthday wasn’t complete with only a half a dozen boy chums – I had to have my Midge. Midge and Eva Setzer, my cousin, were “honored” by having the first ride up to the “loop” in a brand new coaster wagon.
And then at the age of 10 we had to separate for a few years. Harold back to sunny California where he was from and me back to Hoosier Indiana where I was born. All those years until we were 21 we wrote letters back and forth and kept Uncle Sam busy.
As for keeping Uncle Sam busy… here are two letters from Mildred to Harold, when they were both 13 years old. Click to enlarge.
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