Congrats Mamaw and Papaw!

"Waller and Nancy 60 years - what a journey!"  We made little signs to put along the road, marking kids, grandkids, hometowns, and other milestones in my grandparents' lives.  There were a lot to fit on!

Everyone wore these buttons in their honor.

Jonathan, Lucas, and Audrey sport their buttons.

Nancy (I call her "Mamaw"), an only child, grew up in St. Louis during the Great Depression with her mom, grandma, and uncle after her dad passed away when she was just two.  She dreamed of running off to New York City to join the Rockettes, but that was out of the question for "good girls."  Instead, she settled for studying at Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a degree in modern languages: French, Spanish, and Italian.  She might have gone on as a translator for the UN if she hadn't met my grandpa and "settled down," relatively speaking.  She DID have a pretty cool job that she won't tell me much about.  Once she became a mom, she quit her job, but remained active in everything from belly dancing to quilting to the local DAR chapter, even performing a tap dance number well into her seventies at a Christmas program.

Papaw's wearing a shirt from our "Re-Cooper-Ation"
family reunion in 1992.

Waller (or "Papaw") grew up in rural Kentucky on a pig farm - it was little more than subsistence farming.  He had a pretty tough childhood, heightened by his younger brother's death, leaving just him and his sister.  But he made it to med school at Washington University, where he graduated as an anesthesiologist.  He worked for the military for a while, so they were constantly moving while their four sons were being born - Illinois, Iowa, California, finally settling down in Evansville, Indiana.  He worked loooong hours and saw enough on the job to develop a deep aversion to hospitalization.  It almost cost him his life: around age 60, he suffered a massive heart attack and waited almost 24 hours to tell anyone, out of pure stubbornness.  Nobody expected him to recover fully after his near-death experience, but a quarter-century later, while he's slowing down physically, mentally he's sharp as a tack.

We all gathered together in late June from far and near to celebrate their big day: 4 sons, 3 daughters-in-law, 9 grandchildren, and 3 grandchildren's significant others.  (A few people couldn't join us, due to their location in California, Japan, Yemen, etc.  Lame excuse, I know.)  We crammed into the "Country View Tourist Home" near their retirement community in Lancaster, PA, run by a woman named Dorothy whose copious notes on the workings of the house brought us endless amusement.  The home was replete with floral wallpaper, Bible verse plaques, and articles and photos about generations of her Mennonite relatives who had grown up in the area.  It felt like a piece of history.

We celebrated in traditional Cooper style - sarcastic joking, storytelling, and playing Frisbee, speed scrabble, and telephone pictionary - as well as with a formal dinner in Mamaw and Papaw's honor.  The dinner featured their four boys singing barbershop on an adapted version of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" as well as an uproarious game of the Not-So-Newlywed Game, which my cousin Katie emceed.  The meal was so tasty and plentiful that over half the cake was left over - a rarity in this family, since sugar is practically a Cooper family value.  Since Mamaw was so sick on her wedding day that she could barely stomach the forkful of cake Papaw fed her, they reenacted it for us - this time in better health.

Uncle Kirk and Aunt Sally score a point for agreeing on Uncle Kirk's least favorite chore.

The weekend was over in a flash, but it was enough to remind me how blessed I am that my family loves each other.  A friend says my family is like the Cleavers from "Leave It to Beaver" - everyone is still married to their first spouse, all the adults get along with each other, and we always have fun together.  Not that my relatives haven't faced tough times, but we truly have been such a happy family by any standard.  Last week I visited Mamaw and Papaw on my own, without the chaos of swarming Coopers.  They said through sixty years, they've always loved each other and never considered ending their marriage.  That's quite a statement in today's culture, and one that I hope all of us grandkids can one day echo.  Thanks, Mamaw and Papaw, for giving your children and grandchildren a strong foundation in following God and loving your family well!

Feeding each other cake, 60 years later