I wasn’t there, so I know only parts of the story and what I know I know from others having told me stories about the day. The couple lived in Garrison, North Dakota. They were a little bit older than some of their peers when they married. He had lived near Garrison for all of his life. She had moved to the small town in pursuit of a job, tipped off by her sister who had seen opportunity in the town near where the Garrison Dam was being built. The gigantic earth-fill embankment dam is over two miles in length and it took the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers five years to construct, creating a reservoir on the Missouri River extending upstream to Williston and to the confluence of the Yellowstone River near the Montana Border. When it was completed, the rising reservoir flooded one-quarter of the Fort Berthold Reservation including the tribal headquarters, the hospital, and 154,000 acres of farm land.

An entire New Town was constructed to house the reservation’s headquarters. And an additional town, Riverdale, was constructed to house construction workers, housing for Corps officers and engineers, and services for the families of workers including a hospital. Riverdale was only 10.5 miles from Garrison as the crow flies, but the crow can fly over the river whereas cars have to drive around obstacles, making the trip nearly 25 miles. Although cars were making good time on paved roads in the early 1950s, the roads were less than ideal, awaiting the construction of a future diversion dam separating Lake Audubon from Lake Sakakawea. Nonetheless, Riverdale was the location of the hospital that served Garrison in those days. Traveling to get to the hospital was part of life in small town North Dakota.

When it was time for the mother, in labor with her first child to make that trip, her husband was 200 miles away in Hettinger, near the South Dakota border, wiring a new school building. The contract was important to his struggling electrical company and the income was critical with a new baby on the way. His parents were 75 miles away in the state capitol, Bismarck where his father was serving as the Sergeant at Arms of the North Dakota legislature. The laboring mother had to call on a friend for the ride to the hospital.

In those days no one knew whether the child would be a boy or a girl until the birth, ultrasound technology being a generation away. The joy and surprise of the birth was sufficient to merit several long distance phone calls, themselves a luxury at the time. The baby was the first grandchild for the grandparents, who rushed to make the trip from Bismarck to see her.

Somehow the stories I have heard never reported how long it took the father to get up to meet his new daughter. What I know is that both parents grew into their roles and formed a close family that nurtured the baby and the two sisters that followed over the next few years. What I know is that a couple of decades after the birth they became the best in-laws a person could ever want when I married their eldest daughter in a small ceremony at Mayflower Congregational Church in Billings, Montana.

The fact that the wedding was in Billings, Montana is the result of the changes that occurred in the life of the family over the years. After the second daughter was born and the third on her way the young family moved from Garrison, North Dakota to Libby, Montana, where the Corps of Engineers was planning to construct another dam, a 422 ft. tall dam nearly a mile long across the Kootenai River. Several factors, including the need to re-engineer the dam so that it could withstand earthquakes, meant that construction of that dam was delayed and after operating a Dairy Queen ice cream stand and working in the electrical business, job prospects demanded a second move - this time to Billings which is where the family lived when I met them at a family church camp in the mountains south of my home town.

Although I wasn’t initially much impressed by the family, I remember my first meeting of their daughter, who became more interesting to me a few years later when we met at church youth rallies. I had the audacity to ask her to the junior prom at our high school. She had the courage to accept and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, 50 years after we celebrated her first birthday as a newly wed couple, we’ve seen a parade of birthdays come and go. We’ve celebrated in Montana, Illinois, North Dakota, Idaho, South Dakota and Washington. We’ve had cake and ice cream and a few meals in restaurants. We’ve been joined in our celebrations by friends, our own children, and our grandchildren. A nephew arrived one day earlier than her birthday fairly early in our married life. He is now a high school teacher. Our first grandson came the day after her birthday and our youngest grandson arrived on his brother’s birthday. Today is the center of a season of February birthdays in our family. As has been the case since we moved to Washington, there will be more than one cake.

Today is a day of stories. We’ll tell a few of them to our grandchildren and perhaps I’ll learn a detail or two more than I have retained even though I’ve heard the stories many times over the years.

Mostly, however, for me, today is a day of gratitude. Among the deepest blessings of my life is the love that we have shared. There was a time, near the end of 2019, when I thought that I might not get another birthday with her. Two cardiac arrests landed her in the iCU with on a ventilator with a port connected to a maze of IV pumps installed in her. After a few long nights at her bedside and an extended period of recovery, however, we were given the gift of a return to full health and vitality. These days I get to take a walk with her every day, to hold her hand in mine, to listen to her voice as she tells me about her day, and to share the joy of her presence.

It is a day of celebration. Happy Birthday!