Guest Blogger Week: A Love Story

My mom’s mom Ann met her husband (my future grandfather Bobby) in the hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1956 when she was 19 years old. She had  broken her arm and leg in a car accident when her boyfriend at the time crashed the car they were riding in while reaching for a dropped cigarette on the floor of the car.

My grandfather was also in the hospital for a car wreck. He had fallen asleep while driving home one night and flipped his car into a ditch. His back had been broken and his legs were rendered useless. He was in physical therapy to try to learn to walk with leg braces and crutches. He was 20 years old.

The nurses in the physical therapy unit introduced them to each other. My grandma says that it was love at first sight. After her injuries healed and she was able to leave the hospital, she would still go back and visit him every day. About a year after they met and only a couple months after Bobby left the hospital, they got married. She was only 20 and he was 21.

Nine months after their wedding day she gave birth to my mom, Jane. A few years later she had a son, my Uncle Bill. My grandfather used crutches and leg braces for the rest of his life, but it didn’t keep him from building a house for his family from the ground up and planting a vineyard in their backyard.

My mother said that she never once heard them have a fight. Ann and Bobby loved each other purely for nearly 50 years.  He passed away a few years ago and while my grandma misses him, she knows they will be reunited one day. Until then she is living life fully for the both of them.

Written by Alex O.  (Photo by Uncle Tungsten )