How We Met, Dated, and Married during the 1950’s
written by James L. Fouss and Judith L. (Theiss) Fouss
as requested by Jody in 2011.

This story is jointly authored by Jim and Judy.Judy’s part is relatively short and to the point of the title, and Jim’s section will be a bit longer as some related details are included on the How, the Dating period, and the trigger for the timing when we were Married. The person that provided the pestering and constant reminders that Jim should ask Judy out for a date was George Wilson, a classmate of Judy’s at Marietta High School who graduated the same year she did, 1953.George attended The Ohio State University in the Agriculture College the next year, 1954, the same year Jim graduated from Lowell High School.Jim also attended The Ohio State University in the Fall of 1954 and majored in Agricultural Engineering.Jim did not have a car in those early years at college, so he rode with George back home to Lowell on some of the weekends that George when home for a weekend visit.George began dating Judy during some of those weekend trips back to Lowell and Marietta. Judy was attending classes at Marietta College after High School and working part-time in the Blood-Bank at the Marietta Memorial Hospital under a 2-year work study program to become a Medical Laboratory Technician.When George found out that I knew Judy because my parents and Judy’s parents knew each other and often attended some of the same parties, for example, annual Christmas parties hosted by mutual friends or bosses.Then George started pestering me to give Judy a call for a date on one of the weekends we would be going home.I told George that I had thought of doing that, but would get around to it one weekend.George didn’t give up, and finally I wrote a letter to Judy.I do not recall many of the details in that first letter[1] other than asking if she would go out with me on one of the weekends when I would be home from Ohio State.She wrote back and agreed to go out with me! – but it was not considered a “real” date -- “just friends” by her at that time.Then on the selected weekend in 1956, as soon as George dropped me off at my home farm in Lowell, I immediately went to the phone and called Judy, before I “chickened out,” to confirm that she would still go out with me– she agreed!Our first evening out together was to a movie at the Colony Theater in Marietta (where Judy had worked as an usher to guide people to their seats in the dark – when they arrived late for a movie).As I recall, I didn’t have enough money to pay for both of us to attend that first movie, so Judy had to kick in on the cost for her ticket (the girl in the ticket booth was one of Judy’s friends, and I think she got a real kick out of what happened and probably kidded Judy later about it).We do not remember the title of that first movie we attended (although Judy remembers some things of what it was about), and it is not one of the 1950’s movies that show up now from time-to-time on TV movies.

The following weekend a college friend of mine from Beverly, Ohio and I had a double evening out scheduled with two nursing students from one of the nursing student dorms on the Ohio State campus; I fulfilled that prearranged outing although I was aware that Judy probably did not like it that I went through with that prearranged “date.”Nothing more was ever said about it, however, as I never went out with anyone else but Judy after that last outing with the nursing student at Ohio State.Judy and I dated for about 2 years, and since I still did not have my own car, I had to use the family car on all dates.Also during those two years on at least 2 weekends Judy came to Columbus (Ohio State) and visited with me rather than my going home to Lowell on those weekends. She rode the Bus from Marietta to Columbus (a 4-hour trip), and I met her at the downtown Columbus bus station and we rode the Electric Bus up High Street to the Ohio State campus area where I lived in a rooming house.The landlady of the house, where I roomed with a roommate on the third floor, insisted that Judy sleep at night in the guest bedroom on the second floor rather than on the third floor with me (remember this was in the 1950’s and things were different then) – my roommate (David, a foreign language major) would have gladly found another place to stay with a friend on those weekends – but No, not needed.Judy returned to Marietta on the bus too after those weekend visits with me in Columbus.

Then after the first quarter of my third year in engineering courses, a change was made in the required courses for the Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering that included taking a new Civil Engineering course in concrete design and testing.The new 5-hour course included an all-day Saturday Laboratory to test the strength of concrete cores the class had molded in combination class/lab sessions during the previous week; that course began in January 1958 and lasted the entire Winter Quarter.By that time in late 1957, Judy had stopping attending classes at Marietta College, because she too had a change in college course requirements when the State of Ohio terminated the 2-year work-study program for becoming a Medical Laboratory Technician by requiring a 4-year college degree to meet the new qualifications.Thus, Judy began working full-time at the Marietta Hospital Blood-Bank to save money for when we would get married.Since she was no longer going to Marietta College, and was working full-time at the hospital, I proposed sometime before Thanksgiving in 1957 that we go ahead and get married and move to Columbus, and I could help her arrange for getting a job, at least part-time, at the Ohio State University Hospital.I had already arranged for myself a half-time student employee position beginning in January 1958 with one of my Ohio State professors (the professor who taught the series of Drainage courses for the Agricultural Engineering degree).So that’s what we decided to do, get married then instead of later.I should note that in those days while still going to college, I could not afford to buy her even a small engagement ring when we had first talked about marriage.As we were planning and scheduling the wedding for a few days after Christmas, we went to a jewelry store to buy our gold wedding rings and when I was paying for them I realized that I did not have enough money with me to pay for them both!Each ring cost about $40.00 as I recall. So, like on our first “date” (friendly outing), Judy had to help pay for her own wedding ring.Then we were married on December 28, 1957, and my cousin Joe and his girlfriend, Opal, stood up for us (we had run around some with them).See attached pictures taken immediately after the wedding held in Lowell at the home of the Minister who had married my Dad’s parents many years before (Reverend Otto N. Brauhaus, an old German minister who was about 86 years old when he married us along with his wife’s assistance).We moved to Columbus the very next day, in my first car (a 1947 Plymouth that I had bought from a friend for $100.00), and took up residence in an apartment I had rented (and Judy had never seen beforehand) that was in a duplex house with 4 apartments on two floors.We had the downstairs apartment adjacent to the landlady, a very nice person who had lost her husband several years before.

08/24/2011; Jim (senior author) and Judy (chief editor) Fouss