Della's Recollections
Wedding Bells
Danny and I didn't have any time to waste arranging our marriage. The War Shipping Administration only gave a seaman thirty days ashore before they had to take another voyage. We had to get the license, medical exams and a dispensation from the Catholic Church to speed things up. They waived reading the bans of marriage in public for consecutive weeks. Father Rhein married us in Sacred Heart Catholic Church on Saturday, July 24, 1943.
We only had about a dozen family and a few friends attend. We only had a few days to set everything and lots of relatives and friends were away in the service - two of my brothers were in the Navy and my older sister was off in the Women's Army Corps .
Terry Garland was my husband's best man. Danny was raised with the Garland boys. Later Terry and Danny shipped out together. Terry's girl friend, Myrtle Caldera, who Danny and I often double dated with was there, as was Anna Mayer, who was my best friend through high school. Anna and I always competed for grades. She married a flyer in the Army Air Corps later. Johnny and Willie Anderson came. Willie wanted to give Danny a car he had but since Danny was going back to sea, he never took Willie up on his offer.
Of course, Danny's parents were there and my mother, ( my father had died in 1937 ) and my youngest sister, Mary came. Danny's grandmother, Cecilia Fernandez and his aunt Regina and her two kids were there.
We had talked about honeymooning for a few days in New Orleans but there was a hurricane in the Gulf and they thought it would go ashore in Louisiana. Instead it hit Galveston on July 27th, three days after the ceremony. It was a pretty good storm - enough wind to blow over boxcars on the wharf. We spent the night in a public shelter down on Market Street with Danny's parents, his grandmother and aunt, a couple of his cousins and a bunch of other people. We had to wade out of there the next morning when the storm subsided, as the water in the street was still above our knees. The storm stopped our honeymoon and we never did have one.
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