Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409200006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Kevin Kittredge
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Samuel Waldron was the first boyfriend Karen Bowyer ever had.
They began dating in the ninth grade. A few months after their graduation from Staunton River High School, they were married.
She went to work in a Winn-Dixie. Her husband worked as a carpenter for his uncle. They rented an apartment in Vinton.
They lived on love.
``Sometimes we didn't have anything in the refrigerator,'' Karen Waldron said. ``We were just really two kids. And we had a good time all the time.''
Soon there were two boys, Shannon, now 17, and Brandon, who is 14. There was also a house. And a boat. ``A place at the lake,'' Waldron said. ``A little place.''
It was, in other words, the American Dream in action. Despite the times, it never occurred to Waldron it would fall apart.
``I remember after nine years we were laughing and said, `It's been nine years. We're not supposed to be married now,'' she recalled. ``I really thought it would last forever.''
Then her husband's uncle died, and his job disappeared, Waldron said. She was laid off - three times.
``That's when everything just sort of - '' she makes a sound like air leaving a balloon.
Eventually she walked out, she said, convinced the struggle life had become would be easier alone. She took the boys.
She had wanted the usual things from life, she said. Two kids and a house. ``Just the typical dream. And we got it. It was case of getting it all and losing it all, and having to get it all back again.''
Samuel Waldron said married life ``had its ups and downs,'' but declined to say talk at length. He said he has not remarried.
``The past is gone,'' he said. ``It's over with for me.''
Karen Waldron described herself as ``an independent kind of person. Strong. Tough. Every time I lost my job I got a better one.''
Still, the decision to leave her husband was very hard, she said - not least because divorce is frowned upon in her church.
For a while, she believed she would not go to heaven.
And now? ``I think God wants you to be happy.''
Waldron currently works in the credit union at the VA Medical Center in Salem.
She lives with her boys in a tidy trailer with a postcard view of the mountains, on property owned by her parents. It is just up the hill from the house where she grew up.
Living there, she feels she has recovered what she lost when she divorced.
``I guess when it comes time to buckling down to responsibility, you change,'' Waldron said. ``You get wiser. You get your priorities together. I don't think you really know what you want until you are in your mid-20s. When you're 17, you know everything. ...
``I think there's a purpose for everything that happens in life - to make you a stronger person.''
Was her divorce a kind of test?
``Yes,'' Waldron believes. ``I hope I passed.''
by CNB