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Happy Valentine's Day: Sixty-Three Years Later

By Rose Mary Lentz, of the Press-Citizen
Monday, February 14, 1972 - Iowa City Press Citizen - 5A

This Friday, it will be 63 years since Carrie Mae Mentzer and Francis Silas Glaspey exchanged vows under a white lace and orange blossom canopy in the parlor of the bride's home.

They set out that day in a horse and wagon over roads so mud caked that Francis says, "You had to stop every once in awhile to clean the clay out or it would break your wheels."

And Carrie remembers the hen they had with them. "Mother didn't want it and she didn't want to kill it so she said, 'Here take it.' Of course, I didn't think we'd get any eggs out of it. I thought you had to have a rooster."

"Oh, not for eggs," Francis laughed.

"Well, I know that now," Carrie said, only slightly chagrined. "We got a lot of eggs from that hen too," she said.

Friends gathered to help celebrate the occasion that evening with a buffet supper set to background music from a piano. And as tradition dictated, Francis's older unmarried brother, Albert performed a bachelor dance in a well scrubbed pig trough brought into the parlor for the celebration.

A shivaree planned by friends moved the party to Hirt's Hall where the Havered band played the grand promenade and "Wedding Waltz", both lead by the bride and groom.

Ever since that day the Glaspeys have not roamed far from Liberty Township.

"I've lived here all my life," says Carrie proudly.

She attended Liberty Township Schools, Iowa City High School and the Iowa City Academy where she received her "Normal Training." Before her marriage, she taught school in Liberty and Sharon Township schools.

She remembers visiting a schoolmate, Clara Lewis in her attic apartment, "because she made such good candy." Later the schoolmate married a Williamsburg boy by the name of Russell Stover who turned his wife's recipes into a million dollar candy business.

Francis Glaspey attended school in Johnson County and, when he was 18, tried his hand at homesteading in Canada. A year later he moved to a half section in the Dakota Territory near Lignite where he lived in a one room 8 by 12 hut, "made with rough boards and sodded up 3 feet thick."

The land he says, "was no good for corn, but it was great for potatoes. Potatoes likes them cool nights."

The couple's first home was on a tract of land in Old South Liberty Homesteaded by Mrs. Glaspey's great grandfather in the late 1700's. In 1920 the family moved back to Hills and Mr. Glaspey enrolled in the Jones School of Auctioneering in Chicago. He combined auctioneering with farming and moved to the Huntziner place south of Hills. In 1932 the family moved north of Hills to their present home where Mr. Glaspey still does the chores and Mrs. Glaspey runs the household.

"We're the only people still around here from way back," says Carrie. The only ones who remember when the Huntziner land sold for a dollar and a quarter an acre.

Their life together wasn't always easy, she says. "If she wanted anything we had to work hard for it."

"I remember," she says, "when we wanted to get a Ford. We milked cows, we raised chickens, we picked strawberries - the children and I - any little thing to get ahead."

"No, it wasn't a bed of roses," she repeats.

And then she remembers the summers.

"I helped out in the fields - harrowed and hayed - and sometimes when the baby would get cross, I'd let Francis take him around the field for a couple of rounds till he'd fall asleep and then I'd bring him home and put him to bed."

Although the officially recorded date for Carrie's birthday is March 30, she is not sure that it's correct.

"Mother used to say she did not want any April Fool babies, so when I was born a few minutes past midnight on March 31, she told the midwife to day I was born the 31st. So, I don't know," she says. "My birthday's anytime between the 30th and April 1st, I guess."

Mr. Glaspey celebrated his 86th birthday, November 1. He is sure of the date, though, unlike his wife's, it is not recorded anywhere.

"I think they must have started doing that a few years after I was born," he said.

There are no special plans being made for Friday's 63rd anniversary. "The kids," says Glaspey, "are spread out all over the country."

They have five children: Mrs. Claire Jackson of Grinnell, Mrs. Loren Reugesseger and Mrs. Leland Buttergaugh of Tempe, Ariz., Robert of Hills and Mrs. Lloyd Ross of Ormond Beach, Fla. A second son, Karl, was accidentally killed 3 ½ years ago. There are 19 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

After 63 years of marriage would they do anything different?

"Oh, I don't know," Francis says, "lots of times a fellow will look back and say he would have done this differently or that differently, but if he had it to do over again, he'd probably wind up doing the same thing."

Do they have any advice to young newlyweds?

"Oh, I don't think I could give anybody advice like that," says Carrie, "Everybody just had to learn for themselves."

"The only thing," she added slowly, "is that you have to learn how to give and you have to learn how to take."

"Yes," she reflected, "Give and take."

Picture 1 at right is their wedding picture, Francis seated and Carrie standing to his left. Caption: "The bride wore an unpolished navy blue satin gown with a high yoked neck and leg of mutton sleeves trimmed with white silk rushing and embroidered satin rosettes. A cummerbund was softly tucked the gown above the waistline…"

Picture 2 below, Francis is seated in a rocking chair, left leg crossed over his right, Carrie standing with her right hand on her hip behind and to the right of him. Caption: "The Glaspeys in 1972."