My Father and Mother met in Denver!

Here we are living in Colorado, your grandma and me, along with our grown sons Paul, Andrew, and Matt, and grown daughter Mary. Daughter Beth lives in Minnesota. You are our grandkids, Abbi, Mackayla, Morgan, Lindsey, and Andy, who were born and live in Colorado. You, Jeb and Maddie, were born in Arizona and now live in Minnesota, where your little sister, Maisie, was born.
I think it is amazing that we came to Colorado 21 years ago, because Colorado is where your great-grandfather and great-grandmother met. Here is how that came to be:
My father, Rex (same name as me), grew up in a little town in Nebraska, called Ogallala. After he graduated from high school he went to work for a man who owned gas stations and a car dealership. A few months before the big War (World War II) began, in the year 1941 (74 years ago), my father decided to become a soldier in the United States Army Air Corps (corps is a funny word; it is pronounced "core," like "score"; the "p" is silent; the Army Air Corps is now the Air Force).
My mother, Louise, grew up in Des Moines, the Capital of Iowa. After she graduated from high school she went to business school to study how to be a secretary and bookkeeper. After working in Des Moines for a while, she decided to move to Denver to live with her Aunt Edith and get a job. She worked for Gates Rubber Company (they made tires for cars) for a time and for Texaco, a big oil company. She became friends with a woman named Phyllis Pilger when they worked together. Phyllis (who became by my aunt) and her mother (my Grandma Amber) had moved to Denver from Ogallala.
One day, my father Rex was visiting his mother, Amber, and his sister, Phyllis. He had some time off from the Air Corps base in Texas where he was working. Phyllis introduced her big brother, Rex, to her new friend, Louise. Rex and Louise liked each other right away.
They went to dances at Elitch Gardens (which was in a different place than Elitch's is today) and other places while they dated.
When Rex went back to Texas, they wrote letters back-and-forth and occasionally talked on the phone which was expensive at that time (there was no Internet or email or Skype or chat in those days). Then Rex asked Louise to marry him. She said, "yes." So, she and her mother, Eva, went down to the town of Hondo, Texas, where Rex and Louise got married in a Methodist church, December 7, 1944. When Rex got out of the Army Air Corps they moved back to Ogallala where Rex got his old job back. I was born in North Platte, Nebraska, 3 1/2 years later (my mother's doctor was in North Platte which is why I was born there)..