AN EVENT THAT CHANGED MY LIFE MY LIFE

October 13, 1996 1:37 p.m. 

Lillian Illig 
5327 Doliver Houston, TX 77056 621-0610

I stood in the entrance of Christ Church, Houston, Texas, April 27, 1933, next to my Daddy, Arthur Horlock. I wore a pink, Leghorn straw wide brimmed hat. My face reflected my happiness. My light brown hair peeped out softly beneath my hat. My long ecru lace dress clung to my tall slender body. I could have worn white but thought it too impractical for my future life as a wife in Galveston, Texas. Anyway I could not afford a white dress. My godfather, Uncle Joe, had paid for my dress. I carried a simple bouquet of pink roses.

Next to me stood my Daddy. I, being taller, looked down at him. He wore a plain dark suit. His hair had turned gray early. His face blushed from drink, a habit which had gradually divorced me from his fatherly love. I hoped he would walk straight and steady. I took his arm.

My attendant, Eva West, a tall, slender blonde with blue eyes, a large hat, and a long blue dress, smiled at me to reassure me as she stood poised and ready. She had been my best friend, but now I was leaving her. We would not be as close ever again.

Suddenly bells rang out. Throbbing sounds came crushing down from the above bell tower, surrounding and enclosing me in an imaginative vise. I felt all cramped and crowded together. In a few seconds I would break through this noisebarrier and walk down the aisle, leaving behind my girlhood, my mother and father, and brother, my best friend, my job and become a different person, a married woman in a world fo love and beauty and great expectations!

Eva went first, stepping slowly and gracefully to the soft organ music.

Then the exciting strains of “Here Comes the Bride” rolled out in crescendo. Daddy and I started out of the foyer. Astonished, I could see the congregation filled the church. As I passed, I smiled at our Rice friends who had come to telephone invitations. No engraved invitations went out.

Now, I could see Carl, smiling at me as if he could eat me up. His slender athletic figure came from playing golf since a boy. His plain dark suit emphasized his handsomeness. Carl embodied everything a bride could wish for: handsomeness, intelligence, sense of humor, kindness, stability, dependability, and most of all his love for me.

Carl’s only attendant, The Reverend Charles Sumners, stood by him in his preachers’ dark suit with clerical collar.

Pictures of my job came rushing through my mind. I had a job as secretary with a steamship company which traveled between New Orleans and Houston. They had stopped paying us salaries. Finally the Red Lion Truck Company bought the steamship business with me along as secretary. The company and all its trucks did business (as my family called it) down by the Vinegar Works. I had to take a streetcar to town and transfer to a place beyond the Bayou. The acrid smell of vinegar filled the area along with the fumes from the trucks. Instead of a plain typewriter I used one which made eight copies of Bills of Lading at one time. Now that episode dissolved into the past.

We came to where Mama sat. She looked pretty and happy for me. Her eyes shone brightly as she smiled at me. I would always have Mama’s love, but now I must leave her, and I wanted to.

I thought about all those love letters Carl and I had exchanged over two and half years. Being in love resembled being in a spell. After work I hurried in the house to find my daily letter. It seemed like food to a starving person. Once the letter was read, enough energy had to be scraped up to write an answer. Now we could stop the letters.

Finally we came to the foot of the altar, and the preacher, The Reverend James S. Allen, a young, slender man in his black robe and white cassock, a friend of mine, smiled broadly as I approached. He had been worried for fear Daddy wouldn’t make it down the aisle. So far all had made it to the altar.

Daddy left to go sit by Mama. Carl moved closer to me and took my hand. Now came the time for each to say, “I do.” There was no veil to bother with, so he reached up under the hat and kissed me.

The music started and as we walked back down the aisle he leaned closer to

me and sang a silly little song to make me smile, the same song he sang when we

marched in the Rice May Fete. We both laughed and laughed as we almost skipped down the aisle, nodding

to our friends and thinking this is the end of our Rice days and friends.

We did not stay to say goodbye to anyone. We got in the car, drove to Aunt Mae’s, changed our clothes and drove to Galveston, Texas, to start our new life together.