Mom's TRUTH: For Better or Worse........

Sixty-three years ago today Andrew George Lampiris and Marjorie Elizabeth Curtis were united in Holy Matrimony in front of the same parlor windows that Ethel Leona Pearce and Wilbert Curtis had exchanged their vows.
July 21, 1945--the Second World War was just about ending and Andy and Margie met in the USO in Sault Ste Marie, MI where Margie played the piano for the soldiers and sailors guarding the Soo Locks.

Andy, however was not guarding the Soo
Locks!! After serving five years in the Pacific in New Guinea and Australia, he was sent to Miami for two weeks of R&R. In February, after that short vacation, he was sent back to Chicago where he was placed in charge of prisoners of war from both Japan and Germany. They boarded these prisoners onto trucks and trains and took them up the Wisconsin coast to the Upper Penninsula of MI to a Prisoner of War Camp in Raco, MI. Almost noone in the area even realized that they were housing prisoners right down the road from their rural farms.
When Andy came into the Soo, and walked into the USO where Margie was serving cookies, she almost immediately whispered to her girlfriend,"He's the one --I'm going to marry that man." They were an unlikely pair--- They really came from different worlds--He was a Catholic from Chicago and she was a Presbyterian from Dafter, MI--a very small farming area outside of the Soo.

But they were very much in love and by July of that same year they were married. Margie finished her time working at the Soo Locks Tower and Andy was released from the Army after 6 years of service. They moved to Chicago and had to live with his parents for two years before they could find an apartment.

This is the house we bought when I was five years old. This is my brother Andy at age 5 1/2, I was almost 8 and my sister Nancy was born that year in October--1954.

My parents first Christmas in 1945---Chicago.

Every summer, my dear dad put my brother and sister, mom and myself on a train and we went to stay on the farm for about 6 weeks. He stayed back in the hot city and worked for us!!