70th Wedding Aniversary Today.

Amarillo First Baptist now from their
Facebook Page (click here to see)

John E. Wren, Pres.
Western Merchants.
(click here for more)

Happy aniversary 
mom and pop!

Some of my Facebook friends may not know about my parents' startup story. They should make a movie about their lift togetherr, one with a single mother, the other with a mother who would have in some ways been much better off single, together they achieved the true American Dream.

Amarillo High School "The Sandies" is where Jane Wren my mom and and my dad John E. Wren (who cancer took in 1979, just after he'd gotten them into the condo where mom lives now) met in 1941. They eventually married March 16, 1944 after dad was discharged from the Navy. They were married in a small ceremony in the parsonage of First Baptist Church (photo of it today) by the

Mom with twin greatgrandson,
Christmas 2009.

pastor who'd been there since 1941, Dr. A. D. Foreman. Mom and dad's best friends were the only witnesses, Sandies C. E. Nance, Milda Fey and Betty Mashburn (who later married Bob Ely, he eventually became pastor of Trinity Methodist Church here in Denver and he preached at my dad's funeral in November, 1979 at Wilshire Presbyterian Church.)

I just talked with mom on the phone, she's doing ok, but not feeling like doing anything today to celebrate. She said she'd just been sitting and thinking, I'll bet, she has a lot of memories. How many trips did she and pop take together?

To go from that day 70 years ago when two kids from financially poor families found the courage to marry (thank God they didn't go to the pitiful pre-marital counciling that is given today) to what they were able to accomplish together is the very best example I know of the chance to work hard and get ahead in life, the possibilities America once held and I think the possiblity that can be ours once again if enough people read Edmund Phelps book Mass Flourishing, insist candidates in the upcoming elections read it, and each and everyone of us start doing all we can to restore the vitalism and dynamism that we once had. I know pop would have loved it, it's the sort of thing men like George Vineyard used to talk about, I'm sure, when they taught senior high boys in Sunday school.

One thing that could be easily changed immediately, our leaders should start setting the example by taking seriously themselves and encourage everyone who hears their talks to go to church on Sunday, or to temple on Saturday, or to practice whatever they find helpful , to practice their own religion, to pray for them and to ask our higher power, what most of us call God, including those who print and coin our US Money, ato pray for all the leaders of the world and all common people, that we all be filled with hope and encouraged to get back to work, trusting the little we can do, that each and everyone of us can do, will with God's help, be enough.

God bless mom and dad and all those like them in the greatest generation who set a good example for us in so many different ways, and may God bless us all and allow us to each respond to what we are being called on now to pick up the fallen flag and carry on.
God bless you, God bless America and the world, and don't forget to go to (in what ever way you understand it) church. +++