Viola & Ed

When I was young, I enjoyed hearing how my parents, Viola Shows and Edward F. Kramer, met. Mother worked, often as a fashion model, in a department store in our small hometown of Lecompte, Louisiana. As is the way in small towns, she was well aware that a handsome, dapper young sugar chemist had come to work at the sugar mill near by. Dad, on the other hand, had been in the store several times and had seen mother there. One day he went in to buy a pair of gloves and she waited on him. He introduced himself and proceeded to ask her for a date the following Friday. She answered that she was sorry, she had a date that night, so he asked her out on Saturday and Sunday, getting the same answer.  Now, this was in the 1920’s. Mother told us Dad looked like he was about to turn away, and she knew she wanted to get to know him, so she blurted out, “How about Monday night?” And that is how it started, a mutual love that was apparent to all who knew them throughout their lives. They had more than sixty years together and even when they were in their late eighties and nineties, people remarked about their devotion to each other. There was never a time that I doubted that my parents loved each other.   Rheba Kramer Mitchell