Fifty Years Together: Red Deer and Kelowna - Part 3

This is the final part of the speech my mother wrote in 1994, an account of my parents'  50 years together. This week marks the 70th anniversary of their marriage on August 26, 1944:

In 1953 we moved to Red Deer where Dick worked as a garage mechanic, specializing in automatic transmissions, and I taught home economics at River Glen High School.

Here Dick had a regular work schedule, only 9 hours a day from Monday to Friday, and 4 hours on Saturday, from 8am till noon. (49 hours a week!) He also got 2 weeks off in the summer, which allowed us to take family vacations.

 

We often drove to Kelowna, BC after my parents, Hugo and Olga Bartz, moved there. We enjoyed the Okanogan Lake, perfect for boating, fishing, and water skiing.

In 1959 we moved to Kelowna where I again taught Home Economics, first in West Bank, then in Kelowna, and Dick worked as a mechanic.

In the summer time, lots of friends and relatives from Alberta came to visit. We all enjoyed our boat - fishing, water-skiing, or just cruising.

The time passed very quickly. In 1964, only 5 years after we moved to Kelowna, Marlene graduated from high school and left...

When Ted graduated from high school in 1967, he went south to study on a sports scholarship at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma... Now he and his wife live in Dallas...


Dick and I are both enjoying retirement, happy to be together - slowing down, but hopefully able to continue spending time with our children and grandchildren, whom we see at least once a year. We have many happy memories.