President Lincoln-Lilac

[L Verge]

I love it, Blaine! That's the stuff that movies are made of. Was there piped-in Elvis music in the background?

Herb, I never thought of myself as a renegade, but you should have seen the reaction in my family and community when I sent out lavender wedding invitations with my own wording. I was the first not to do the traditional white invitation, and you would have thought I had committed a cardinal sin. According to an aunt and uncle, however, my cardinal sin was marrying a divorced Catholic. They were heavily into the Masons and the Eastern Star, so anyone with a Catholic background in those days was looked down on. Bringing a divorced man into our Episcopalian family was another no-no.

On the opposite side, however, my husband's former priest in WV refused to let my in-laws publish our wedding notice in the local papers because we were "living in sin" according to him. A year later, he tried the same argument when we wanted to announce the birth of our daughter. That time, grandpa had enough. He was pure Italian, and no one (not even his priest) was going to tell him that his granddaughter was a bastard in the eyes of the church.

One more religious issue in my autobiography that I'm trying out on y'all now: My family has been Episcopal since 1899, when my grandmother forsook the Methodist faith of the Huntts for the Episcopal faith of her new husband. Every religious event in my life has centered around the Episcopal Church. But, it almost didn't happen when it came time to get married. Because my fiance was a divorced Catholic, I was (at first) denied the right to be married in front of the altar at my home church - where my mother had been confirmed and married, and where I had been baptized, confirmed, and the organist since I was twelve-years-old.

Because I had been the organist for so long, my mother was a tad upset. She contacted the Bishop of Washington and got permission for me to get married in the church in front of the altar - but our priest could not marry us. We ended up being married by a Lutheran minister, who was allowed to read from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and as soon as we were announced as husband and wife, my Episcopal priest could come on the altar and deliver the blessings of my church. Talk about screwed up religious principles! There are many ways to show discrimination against people based on things other that race and culture...