Wedding Day - 1941

Dear Diary,

My parents were married 74 years ago today at the home of my mother's parents in Carmel, New York.   My mother was just 19 years old...she looks so young.  Pearl Harbor had been attacked by the Japanese two weeks earlier and America was entering the war.  It must have been a scary time for them.

Yesterday, I watched the old movie Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.  It was being filmed in December of 1941 and included a patriotic segment meant to rally the country.  It gave me an insight into the world my parents lived in at the time of their marriage.  I wonder if they went to see the movie in February, when it was finally released.  I suspect they did.

They started their married life at a momentous time in American history and only 3 years later my father would be fighting in France.  But I also found this film to be pertinent for today.  Crosby sings in the film about the need for all people to have the chance to live in freedom.  So many of our current politicians seem to have forgotten that...

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.