Theirs was not a conventional love story, at least not by today's standards, but for a young couple who grew up in the Flats neighborhood of the city of Lowell, it certainly worked and yielded generations of a family to follow, including the author of this blog.
70 years ago today - February 3, 1951, my mother, Marie Payette, married Jimmy Cook.
Sadly, neither of them are alive today to experience their platinum anniversary together with us, but it's a nice thought to imagine them still enjoying their best ballroom dances together. Sadly, I wish all of the pics to follow that depict their first months together had captions and dates to accompany them and provide perspective, but alas, I have to make do with what I've got.
Found this arcade photo booth gem of the pair from Memorial Day, May 29, 1950. That would have put my dad two weeks shy of 21, my mother eight days into her 23rd year.
My sister Kathleen laughs when she hears a recounting of how my parents started dating.
For anyone familiar with Lowell's neighborhood history, the pair was well known in their Flats neighborhood, which is located, in today's Mill City geography, at the terminus of the Lowell Connector, along Gorham Street, towards the area known as Back Central Street. My mother lived on Gorham Street, my father, off and on on nearby Auburn or Richmond Streets.
My mother was a clerk in the Registry of Deeds at Lowell Superior Court, located just a few blocks from her home. My father was a lineman for the Lowell Electric Light Corporation (later Massachusetts Electric, today, National Grid) on Perry Street.
My mother, as chronicled elsewhere on this blog, was also a chorister singing in a choir that performed regularly at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. My father was a street tough neighborhood kid, who lost his mother at the age of 10 then enjoyed a fairly successful professional boxing career, cut short when he was jumped by some thugs on Market Street and nearly beaten to death because he refused to throw a fight at the request of a local bookie. My dad opted to go the professional route, at first, using his deceased brother Gerald's name on the boxing card, before finally taking his own name in the ring. He told my brother he chose to go the professional route in order to get paid money, the only way he could survive as a teenager in the 1940s.
Both of them were attendees of St. Peter's Church, now lost to the wrecking ball.
My parents would occasionally recount what counted as courting for them in those days.
My father would stand, leaning against the wall outside the law offices located on the corner of Gorham and Highland Street. The building's still there today.
He would watch every day as my mother walked back and forth from her home to her office in the courthouse. Occasionally, he would walk her to her home. Eventually, he asked her out.
Today, that type of activity might be considered stalking.
Then, it was courting Lowell style, and so it was he summoned up the courage to ask out the girl he admired from afar - or at least from across the street.
She consented, much to the consternation of some who couldn't understand why this singing maiden would pair up with a rough and tumble boxer.
To quote a St. Peter's School nun who saw the two of them pushing my brother in a baby carriage years later - "you didn't marry him, did you?"
Yes, Sister, she did.
Believe it or not, I actually discovered both a napkin and a matchbook from my parent's special wedding day. Preserved, albeit in a fragile state, 70 years later.
As legend has it, my father proposed to my mother while the pair sat on a park bench in the South Common, which in its heydey, was quite the social gathering spot in Lowell - easily accessible by foot, centrally located, and sprawling enough to accommodate large crowds (see: V-Day celebration)
The couple got married, of course, in nearby St. Peter's Church at 2 in the afternoon on Saturday, February 3, 1951, under the sign of Aquarius. (Might be why my mother wanted so badly to see the historic church spared from demolition.
According to the Lowell Sun newspaper's account of the wedding:
Rev. William Mullen officiated at an altar adorned with mixed gladioli. Escorted by her father (my grandfather Phillip Payette), my mother wore a dress trimmed with rhinestones.
After the church ceremony, my parents and their invited guests headed to a location, whose name currently escapes me, lost to the history books. It resembled an airplane hanger with a curved roof and was in nearby Dracut. The name will come to me and I'll come back here to update the post once I find it. Happy to hear from anyone who might know its proper name.
My mother's maid of honor was her sister Helen. My aunt, god bless her, is still rocking it out!
My father's best man was his younger brother, Eddie.
The couple went off to honeymoon at a recreation club in New York - picture the setting in the Dirty Dancing movie, and I always envision it was something along those lines, absent Baby and Johnny. According to the Sun newspaper, when they left for their honeymoon, my mother wore a maroon outfit with black and white accessories and a corsage of white orchids. 
But here's where the story takes a turn, one that thousands of other young couples similarly experienced at the time.
No sooner did my father return from their honeymoon than he shipped off to serve in the Army, fighting in the Korean Conflict. (This comes six years after he had faked his age at 15 to join the Merchant Marines. They sent him back home once his true age was discovered. But he wanted to serve in part because he lost his older brother Gerald to the war.)
Just barely months into their marriage and my father was off to fight in a war, uncertain if he would even return safely. (Spoiler alert: he did, thank God.)
Needless to say, I have access to thousands of photos in the ensuing 51 years that they would continue through their lives together, until my father's passing in 2002. My mother followed him nine years later. Some of those photos depict other wedding anniversary celebrations, including their 40th and 50th.
But I thought for the purposes of commemorating their wedding day, it would be fitting to spotlight the pics that capture when it was just the two of them in the infancy of the Cook family, circa 1951.
My brother Jimmy would come along two years later, my brother Gerald, two years after that. Kathleen made her debut three years later, and then six years later, they stopped when they got it right, bringing me into the world to complete our clan.
I've often said my biggest regret in life was not documenting in writing more of the history of my family when they were around to talk about it.
The stories behind the pics (including the one above at the Pawtucket Falls) are lost to time. I literally have dozens upon dozens of pictures featuring folks whose identities are unknown to me.
One of the primary reasons I still maintain this blog is to help chronicle some of the comings and goings of me, my family and friends during these 21st century years.
Sadly, no such blog existed back in the 1950s, so I'm not able to properly chronicle Jim and Marie's story, providing it the proper historical perspective.
But I'm thrilled that I'm able to share some pics of a young couple who didn't know what the next half century was going to yield for them, just that they were going to tackle it together.
So Happy 70th Anniversary Mom and Dad!
You certainly earned a Platinum rating in our books!
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