Weathering 70 Years of Marriage

Harold & Annie Herring celebrated 70 years of marriage with renewal vows, despite Hurricane Matthew.

On October 18, 1946, Harold Herring and Annie Sutton were married. They were only able to have one child, and I married him. When our daughter married in 2013, my mother-in-law said, “When Harold and I celebrate our 70th anniversary, I’d sure like to wear that wedding dress. My sweet daddy was a sharecropper and he couldn’t afford that in 1946.”

That’s how I started in making Mom’s dream come true. I booked their church, found a lady to make a seven-layer wedding cake (a layer for each decade), and things looked good. Until, that is … the Saturday before the wedding. Hurricane Matthew decided to tear through Wayne, Lenoir and other inland counties.

The Neuse River rose to a record height, electricity was expected to be out for seven to 10 days, and we were declared a national disaster area. The cake lady called in panic, the church had no electricity, and the flower man told me the mums were stuck “across the river.”

Needless to say, we did a lot of praying. However, thanks to the dedicated and incredibly hardworking electric co-op crews, the electricity came back in record time, the cake got made, the flowers arrived and Mom and Dad re-married at 88 & 89 years of age. About 400 people made it, with about 400 who couldn’t … but it was one grand miracle.

Bev Herring, LaGrange, a member of Tri-County EMC