Heaven Was the First Methodist Church

Rosalie Wesson

When I was a child, the year 1941 was a black and white memory in my mind except for the red sky in the evening in December around five o’clock. There were a few other memories in color like the green cedar trees that I called Christmas trees “back East” in Clarksburg and my mother’s pale purple suit and matching hat. The hat had a lavender veil that came to the tip of her nose, and many times she wore it when we went to town to shop.

I suppose the most important memory in color to me at that time was my mother’s red hair and my daddy’s dark hair, and I associated that memory with how very good looking they both were. Jerry and Jack Gunter, my mother and daddy, were an attractive couple by anyone’s standards. She was pretty, tiny, and very feminine, and he was dark and handsome, a masculine, muscular young man, average in height and strong willed. But most of my memories of those early times with them remain in black and white.

The fact was that most of the 1940’s were black and white years in my mind’s eye, and the picture they drew for a child like me was a straight, unwavering line of time marching on one year after the other like the newsreels at the movies I loved to see.

When I think of the 1940’s, the War Years, I think of the black nights when we lived “back East” in Clarksburg, and of how some people thought the Germans were coming by air to bomb us, and of how most everyone went to bed early or drew their drapes after dark. My daddy always ........

But, I‘m getting ahead of myself. The most vivid memories of those times began “back East” in the fall of 1941.

After graduating from Henryetta High School, I enrolled at Oklahoma State University, where I majored in Clothing, Textiles, & Merchandising. I received a B.S. in Home Economics in 1960. During the summers while I was in college, I worked at some interesting jobs. The first summer I was the Telegraph Editor at the Henryetta Daily Free-Lance, and the following summer I was the Social News Editor at the Free-Lance. The summer of my junior year I worked in department store sales and as a College Board member at John A Brown in Oklahoma City. After college graduation I worked in Houston at Foley’s in 1960.

On December 17, 1960, RoI married Bill Wesson, and we moved to Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio, where I worked as a clerk-typist for several years and enjoyed the life of an officer’s wife. In 1963 Bill went to work for IBM in San Antonio, and we lived there for another nine years. I worked some as a substitute teacher before our son, Stephen, was born in 1966.  In 1969 our daughter, Jennifer, was born.

IBM moved us to Dallas, Texas, in 1973, and I spent a lot of time working in volunteer groups at church, the children’s schools and activities, and in my college sorority alumnae group. My favorite activity was being a part of the Mother’s club for the Highland Belles drill team when Jennifer was a member. The children graduated from Highland Park High School.  Steve is a graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, where he now works for Apple Computer. Jennifer graduated from the University of Arkansas, then came home to Dallas to work for Neiman-Marcus, and later, American Teleco. Jennifer is married and has a discount bridal business. She and her husband, Paul, have a baby daughter, Emily, our first grandchild, who was born in May 1999.  Paul is with Texas Instruments so all the men in our family work in the microchip and computer industry.

My hobbies are writing novels which I hope to publish, decorating, antiques, furniture, and flower gardening in containers. I belong to a number of women’s clubs, St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, and I babysit for Emily. We also have a two year old Beagle dog named Suzy who keeps us all busy.

Editor’s note: As this book was finished Rosalie Wesson was being treated for breast cancer, from which she died February 25, 2002. She had previously written two other books, neither of which has been published to date. 

 2020 [ISBN: 1-58107-349-60; 102 pages, 6 x 9 inches, soft cover]