Rita Faye Moreland

To Rita, my beloved wife.

Rita and I first met when my roommate introduced us. This was the day after he and another friend of mine had gone on a double date with Rita and her roommate. He told me that he had just met a girl who was a schoolteacher and thought I would like her. He introduced us that afternoon. It was a weekday and Rita and I both had to work the next day, so I asked her if she'd like to go somewhere and get a cup of coffee and talk. It was around 6 or 7 O'clock in the evening and thinking of going to work the next day and I didn't want to be out too late I took her to the romantic hideaway known as the "Westchester Bowling Alley". We sat and talked and got to know each other and before I knew it the time had slipped away, and it was around 12 or 12:30 and I couldn't believe it. From that time we spent together talking and getting to know each other, I knew she was something special and I wanted to get to know her better. This was in February 1966.During this period of getting to know each other I had a few problems to overcome. Before we had met, she and her roommate had planned on taking a trip to San Francisco to do some sightseeing and she asked me if I would "Babysit" her goldfish while they were gone, which I happily agreed to. Well for some reason the goldfish didn't survive my care taking and died. Then the frantic search for a replacement started, which I was successful at accomplishing before she returned. I don't remember if she figured it out or if I told her what happened, but she knew and jokingly brought it up every so often. Then I forgot her birthday, oh boy, she had remembered min only two weeks before hers and I was in trouble. I was willing to do anything to makeup for it and make her happy, well she chose for me to take her out that night on a date. Now this was in the middle of the week and I always tot to bed between 9 to 10 p.m. I was working on a construction crew and got up at 5 a.m., so this was going to take a lot of effort to pull off and show her a good time. Well she was the one who took care of me because as the night went on, I would fall asleep in my chair constantly and she would wake me up, keeping my head from hitting the table. I can tell you now, I never forgot her birthday again.

Her birthday was April 21st, we had known each other for about two months by now and that she was very special to me. I also knew that school was going to be finished in June and she had promised her Dad that when school was over, she would be back home, get a job, and settle down. Well one evening, it had to be first part of May, after swimming and Bar-B-Q at my apartment complex, she was leaving and heading to her apartment. We were sitting in her car talking about school ending soon and what she had to do. I was thinking that maybe she liked me because she was saying how much she didn't want to leave but that she had promised her Dad she would only be gone one year. She also was saying that maybe when she got back home maybe she could talk to her Dad and maybe convince him to let her come back for one more year. I was very nervous and there were too many "maybes'" in this conversation, and I didn't want her to go. I told her that I felt, if she left and went back home, I was pretty sure we would never see each other again. I then found the courage, (at that time I had no idea where it came from, but I do now, it was God's plan). I told her I loved her and asked her if she would marry me. Well as you know she said yes.

We started planning the wedding, picking the date, ordered the invitations, took a breath and started figuring how to put the wedding together. After a couple of weeks, reality set in and we determined that the best thing to do was to elope. Go to Las Vegas and get married. We chose the next weekend which was Memorial Day Weekend. I took off work Friday May the 27th, before leaving town, we stopped at a jewelry store in East Bakersfield on Baker Street to purchase wedding rings and drove to Las Vegas. As we arrived, we stopped and purchased the marriage license and drove to the first decent looking wedding chapel and got married. We spent the holiday weekend doing touristy things in and around Las Vegas. We drove back to Bakersfield on Monday May 30th, which was Memorial Day. When we got back home Rita had one big issue, she needed to take care of, telling her Dad that we had gotten married. She called and told him and they both cried on the phone, but everything worked out great. We both went back to work the next day. It was a very short honeymoon and I'll never forget it but now we were starting the rest of our lives.

When school ended Rita and her friend, who had been roommate, drove back to Ohio to back her belongings and her family then drove her back to California. When I met her family for the first time were instant friends and grew closer as time went by and eventually felt to be part of the family. Over the next several years all her family moved her to Bakersfield, and we enjoyed each other tremendously.

We married three months after me met, on May 27, 1966, We were married twenty two days short of it being fifty three years of marriage, before she went to sleep in the Lord, I truly believe God brought her to California and put her into my life for which I'm so deeply grateful. She prayed every day, asking God to be with and to help her children, her grandchildren, her family and her friendsand especially me.