The Ideal Marriage

A teenager in search of a better model

I fell in love with the man I would eventually marry when I was only seventeen and a senior in high school. Don Bell was between scholarships at Oxford. The first was a Rhodes Scholarship from Oklahoma University in 1951. The second and thwarted plan was to use another scholarship to work on his Doctor of Philosophy at St. Andrews College, Oxford. His draft board in west Texas called him home to serve his two-year obligation arguing that one could not prolong draft avoidance by taking up a second scholarship.

He taught American and world history in Muskogee Central High School from October to April 1954-55, long enough for us to promise each other that we would be faithful until his army service was over and I had completed two years of college.

For those two years of Army (I graduated high school and went to Bryn Mawr College for women) we corresponded, writing letters and mailing them via the United States Postal Service. We filled many pages with speculations about what makes an ideal marriage. Our middle-class white culture of the fifties lifted up certain standards for social behavior. There were few models of respectful, tender married love. I am not sure it was even a topic for discussion.

As a teenage girl, I observed the adults in my world: my parents and their friends. I overheard a friend of my mother complain, “It’s Saturday night. He always wants it on Saturday night. Let’s keep the bridge game going as long as we can. Maybe he’ll be too tired.”

Another day after my date and I had spent a steamy date-night finger-exploring session, Mother complained that she “wasn’t getting any. Your father has had too much radiation.” He was a surgeon and wore a lead apron when using the x-ray machine in his office. TMI [A doctor later told me too much x-ray had nothing to do with erectile dysfunction.]

When I witnessed a good marriage during my first year of college, I realized I had been seeking a better model to emulate. Priscilla and Arthur Murry of Pound Ridge, New York became my surrogate parents when I needed a model for a loving marriage. Don and I spend several weekends visiting them.

Don was tossed into Psychological Warfare for his two-year army stint. Psy War was a small unit at the Green Baret’s Ft. Bragg Army base in North Carolina. The United State had no boots-on-the-ground war going on in 1955-7. Our only fight was the Cold War. The Psy War unit was the dumping ground for overly educated draftees and educated immigrants expecting citizenship after five years of military service.

Ever sensitive to the new arrivals to his unit, Don noticed a man his age, twenty-four or twenty-five, withdrawn into the corner of his barrack’s cot. In a quiet moment Don welcomed him to Psychological Warfare and asked where he was from. It took more than one attempt before Ben Murray, son of the Murrays, acknowledged Don and made tentative eye contact.

One day while leaning on their brooms to rest in the cell-sucking North Carolina heat, the subject of girlfriends came up. Anything to distract themselves from the misery of sweeping pinecones into piles, bagging them and carting them away. Hurricane season brought torrential rains and gale force winds littering the barren yards around the post barracks with a carpet of pinecones, unacceptable to the commanding officer, especially in the event of an inspection. Ft. Bragg is a four-hour drive from the coast, so the winds seldom destroyed buildings, but the trees got a lashing. Spit and polish tidy meant every pinecone had to be removed. The Army against Nature.

Don mentioned that he planned to marry a girl who was a student at Bryn Mawr, and he planned to see her the next time he had a weekend pass.

“Bryn Mawr?!” Ben sneered. “For God’s sake, spare yourself. Do not marry a woman from Bryn Mawr.”

Ben had married a Bryn Mawr woman and in the same summer had won a Fullbright scholarship to study at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. He was a Sanskrit scholar. His bride refused to accompany him to the Middle East because “she would miss the Season.” You know, the winter round of arts, musical, and theatrical events every New Yorker who is anyone attends, along with the debutant presentation balls which had introduced his wife to society some few years earlier. Snubbed by one snobby Bryn Mawrter, Ben labeled all Mawrters unreliable life companions. The divorce was bitter. His wounds were deep. He wanted to make sure Don didn’t suffer the same fate.

“My girl is from Oklahoma. You have to meet her to know this will not happen to me.”

Don teased Ben out of his doldrums and the next weekend pass they drove to Bryn Mawr, a mere twelve-hours away, got few hours rest and then, with me in the car, drove to Pound Ridge.

In the presence of Priscilla and Arthur Murray I felt included as I was. When Mr. Murray came home to their eighteenth-century farmhouse from the City, he kissed his wife with warmth and affection, asking how her day had been. He greeted his mother-in-law who lived with them with kindness. I watched Mrs. Murray respectfully tie a bib around the old woman’s neck and help her to eat, preserving her mother’s dignity as she guided her gnarled hand to her mouth. Their curiosity about Ben’s and Don’s Army experience, their questions about my studies were genuine and their comments without judgment.

The sweetness of these relationships was new to me. In my growing up experience, no love was ever demonstrated. Hugs were rare. Conversations were competitions. Pride and accomplishment covered a fear of unworthiness. Just showing up was never enough.

My sense that family could be a place of acceptance and safety grew.

I complimented Mrs. Murray on the farmhouse furnishings, simple spindle backed chairs, a settee of simple wood craftsmanship, cushions of sepia, ochre, beige, cream, standing lamps with soft off-white fluted shades. The eye was drawn out the windows to the forested landscape’s trees and flowers.

“I prefer a quiet decor,” she said. “I like to let the guests bring color and sparkle into the room.”

So different from flashy color and bright knotty-pine southwest decor, not ugly, just different. Such contrast to the bombastic pontificating my father was known for.

Don’s and my Pound Ridge visits during our two-year courtship were a laboratory of marriage. Compare and contrast.

When Ben came to our wedding in Oklahoma in June of 1957, he reminded Don that it wasn’t too late to dump the Bryn Mawr woman. In spite of his teasing, his congratulatory hug and kiss were genuine.

In 1962 when our second daughter was born and we were living in Lawrence, Kansas, we asked Ben’s parents to come to her christening. Ben lived in Kansas City at the time, and we saw a lot of him. We named our daughter after his mother, Priscilla at the private baptism at Grace Episcopal church. Don taught at Kansas University from 1961 to 1969.

My parents were not thrilled to have the Murray’s at our daughter’s baptism. No one said anything, but I felt jealousy and hurt from Mother. Compare and contrast. Feelings without words.

We seek what we long for and find glimmers among our fellow humans. It only takes a few good people to the help build a kinder, more loving world.

Who have been your teachers, your models for marriage, for relations? Please share. Continue the conversation. Betsy