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| October 2007 |
| Billie Silvey |
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| A 40s Romance |
| Cecil LaRoe Wesley, a pilot in the U. S. Army Air Corps, was born and grew up in the tiny town of Happy, Texas. He began dating Miss Clara June Huxford, who had grown up just 15 miles away in the larger town of Tulia, Texas. On June 13, 1941, he proposed to her in Breckenridge Park in San Antonio, Texas, while he was stationed at Randolph Field. They were typical of many young people of their era. |
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| They were married on September 21, 1941, in the Sun Room of the Egyptian Apartments in Denver, Colorado, where Cecil was stationed at Lowry Field. The young couple lived in the Egyptian Apartments about two blocks from the capitol building. The photo shows them with the groom’s mother, Ms. Ethel Wesley, and the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Orville Huxford. |
| On December 1, 1941, they moved to an apartment in Sacramento, California. Nearby Mather Field had been expanded and became a training base for single-engine pilots and navigators. Prized possessions were a lamp of blue tinted glass in the shape of an airplane mounted on a silver frame and the 1939 Chevy the bride’s father gave them for a wedding gift. |
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| The couple relaxes in the evening in matching striped pajamas. Cecil, who loves to read, is wearing a satin smoking jacket, not uncommon among leading men in the movies of the era. June, who wears a robe her husband bought her, is feeling pensive. It’s the first time she’s been so far from the family she grew up with in Texas. |
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| On December 7, 1941, June and Cecil invited two service men to their apartment for lunch. June’s mother had taught her to entertain graciously. They managed to stay away from the radio until about 5:00 p.m., when all three men had to return to the base. Pearl Harbor had been bombed! The U. S. was at war! |
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| Cecil helps trim their first Christmas tree, an attempt at normalcy amid reports of friends and neighbors being shot down over the Pacific. |
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| They open their gifts on Christmas morning, including family photos, handcrafted doilies and a pillow, “his” and “hers” towels, a standing ashtray and a lamp. |
| They moved to a house in Mather Field Base Housing, where they lived until 1944. When food was short because of wartime rationing, Cecil and his friends caught fish in the American River. |
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| On their first anniversary, September 21, 1942, a daughter, Billie Ethelyn Wesley, was born at Sutter Maternity Hospital. She was the first native Californian in either family. |