John Alden

7 June 2012

Today we celebrated our 66th wedding anniversary by going to the Ogden Chuck-A-Rama with Fred and Debra's family. They asked how we got together and ended up getting married. Ione had answers
about our dating  and our short courtship but I didn't tell my part of the story.

We were both born and raised in the Hyrum First Ward. Ione's father, Rulon Wright, was my Deacon advisor so we occasionly had Deacon parties  at their house. He had two little daughters who were
usually sent to bed while the boys whooped it up. Since I was almost 4 years older than Ione we
didn't pay any attention to each other.

Then one day while I was home on leave from the Army, I noticed the cutest girl in town. She was prettier than anyone who I had dated so I begain to make plans to take her out. After getting discharged from the army in October 1945, we started going steady and were engaged at christmas time that year.
Her mother wanted time to prepare for the wedding so we sat a date between spring and summer quarter at USAC. After getting married in the Logan temple, we had dinner at the Bluebird, then had a reception that night at Ione's grand parents home. We were both dead tired that night but took off for a long weekend honeymoon.

Now 66 years later we have had 4 children, 20 grand childen and 50 great grand children. What a wonderful life and we are still able to go to work each day and enjoy the fruits of our labor. We think that we have the best family in the world and know that our parents would be very proud of them.