The war was on and they wanted to get married

July 4th, 1942, was sort of the day it began – my parents married at St. Peter’s Church in Rome, N.Y.

They were young. They were in love. There was a War.

My parents were married on July 4, 1942. It was a war-time marriage. When wars happen, marriages happen. My parents stayed married and lived together in the same home at 412 Healy Avenue in Rome, New York. They even rededicated their marriage vows 50 years later in the same church where they took their vows the first time. This is mentioned at the beginning because one result of war marriages was that in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s divorce statistics rose drastically, making the chances of “til death do us part” not much more than 50/50. Weddings are usually beautiful; marriages can be tough. My thought here is – they were so young. They had so many experiences to look Richard Puffer forward to over the next 58 years. World War II had started, and my father had been one of the first people from Rome, N.Y., drafted into the World War II military.

He was in his twenties, and he later told me that he had considered being drafted as a form of involuntary servitude. But he went, as did so many others of his generation. One time I heard the names of several others who got the early call; those names did not stay with me, though I think several reminisced with each other at the Legion post over the years following the war.

World War II Changed ThingsThe onset of American involvement in World War II altered the society of the early 1940s including life, education, and marriage plans. As a child, I heard some stories of these early days, but in truth, there were few stories and not much in the way of how the Puffer guy got together with the Sullivan girl. I have since seen a 1938 year book of St. Aloysius Academy that was my mother's senior class. She had a lot of friends and she had a trip to New York City that senior year but there were no hints of the teen connections. And - it was still the depression.

Married in St. Peter’s ChurchMy parents were married in my mother’s church, St. Peter’s, the Irish Catholic Church in Rome. My father had not been a Catholic, so in the process of the courting he converted and became Catholic, which allowed them to have the church wedding. The Catholic Church had lots of rules about marriage and frowned on mixed marriages and did much to force conversions if couples were not both Catholic, so this was a big deal.

The Wedding ReceptionThe Puffer/Sullivan wedding reception was held in the back yard of the house my mother lived in on Healy Avenue. There is only one story that really resonates with me about that event. My grandfather Sully was a member of the Rome Fire Department. The way I remember the story is that he wanted to invite the guys on shift to the reception, so someone started a fire in the yard and they called the Fire Department to come out to

extinguish the fire.

The Early Marriage YearsFor me, there are no memories. My father was in uniform at the wedding, and I am guessing he was heading back to Camp Drum where he was in training by the end of the weekend. I was born on January 1, 1947, five years after their wedding.

At some point, my father was shipped to England and spent the early years of his marriage to my mother thousands of miles away. That is a common story of World War II marriages. My mother worked as a secretary at Revere Copper and Brass in the war years, and I think she enjoyed the freedom that women were beginning to feel as they became more and more vital to the workforce. She made some friends whom she kept during my young years, as I remember visiting them at the Garden Apartments as a child. I do not know for certain, but I think my mother might have lived in those apartments while my father was away during the war.