Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409200011
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KEVIN KITTREDGE/STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Richard Nixon - recent ex-president - was suffering from phlebitis, according to the morning papers. A new jet had just soared from London to Los Angeles in three hours and 47 minutes, outrunning the sun.
Down here in Virginia, 13 Roanoke area women said, ``I do.''
Charlotte Lynne Anders. Priscilla Grace Grindstaff. Karen Marie Bowyer. Carolyn Yvonne Otey. Susanne Richardson Hall.
Call them the Class of '74.
As the world turned, they tied their knots one by one. Kathleen Rose Seifert. Debra Joyce Wingo. Joyce Edna Mitchen.
They did not, do not, know each other. They have little enough in common.
But they shared a wedding date, and a page the next day in the Roanoke Times.
Early this summer, we pulled that page up from our files. And then we tracked down all 13 to see how things went.
Had they found happiness? Misery? Children? Rewarding careers? Drudgery? Pain? Had the years been cruel or kind?
Would they do it again?
Had they done it again already?
Were they married still?
All bets were off, on marriage and a lot of other things, in 1974.
Because these were uncertain times. A time of oil embargoes and gasoline lines, of shortages; the year that Watergate sunk the president.
The '60s were finally, indisputably over - but people were only beginning to understand how much America had changed.
And marriage, too.
``I think '74 was a pretty stressful year,'' said Jim Dunn, who married the former Kathleen Rose Seifert of Roanoke that year in a Richmond church. ``There was such a tremendous amount of change in such a short while.''
``Those were really tough times,'' added Charlotte Reed - formerly Anders - of Christiansburg, who married her high school sweetheart, Donald, in 1974. ``So few of us had traditional weddings.''
Reed recalled friends who got married by a creek in winter. The uncertainty, change, questioning characteristic of the times - ``I just think that had to have a major impact on marriages,'' she said.
To Randall Lyle, an assistant professor and clinical director of the family life center at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, '70s marriages were the harvest of the '60s.
The young adults of the '70s were known as the ``me'' generation for a reason. They had come of age on a wave of brand names, grown up amid what Lyle calls ``the beginnings of the takeoff of rampant consumerism.''
There was also the sexual revolution, and the changing role of women. All in all, ``We've seldom seen such a radical social upheaval as we did at that time,'' Lyle said.
What did it all mean for marriage? To the old wedding vows, Lyle said, there was suddenly an asterisk attached: ``as long as it meets my needs.''
``A generation ago that asterisk didn't exist,'' Lyle said.
It proved momentous. Nearly half of all marriages now end in the divorce, statistics show. For those married late in the '70s, the numbers are actually a little worse: 52 percent.
This comes as no surprise to our September brides.
Of the 13 Roanoke area women whose wedding announcements appeared in the Roanoke Times a generation ago, only five celebrated their 20th anniversary last week.
Seven are divorced. An eighth is about to be.
We invited all of them to tell their stories. Many of them did.
Share a smile, then, and learn a few hard lessons with the Class of '74.
by CNB