Jennifer Johnston Smith

"Goin' to the Chapel" ... or in our case, Judge's chambers....

Hearing about how some of us met and married our spouses has been really interesting, so Yahn and I thought we would relate the details of our wedding.... I have good money here that says it is probably the strangest courtship and wedding story of anyone in the class. If yours was more bizarre ... then come sit by me and let's talk!!! BTW, if I had had good money then ... to cover all the bets I'm sure were made on how long our marriage would last ... we would be quite comfortably fixed here in our "golden" years....

I've shared various details about our life and journeys together (and one really cherished story about a date) in diverse places on the blog. (See particularly on the "main" blog, "Well, Durn ... I'm Thankful...", published November 17, 2007, "Close Encounters of the Bobcat Kind..." published September 13, 2007 and "Where in the World is the Class of '63?", published August 17, 2007. Also see the "Yahn Smith" post under "Show and Tell", published January 8, 2008.) And now in the spirit of candor evidenced so wonderfully by Joe Don and Sheila ... and because it's a really good story ... I'll share with you all the tale of how Yahn and I actually met, and the circumstances ... and others ... attending our wedding.

In February 1967 I was in Colorado Springs when I ran into a friend. Naturally we wanted to catch up a bit, but she was on her way to meet other friends for lunch. She asked me to join her group, and I assented ... and it was then that I met Yahn. (See his comment on our meeting to the post "And Then Scheherazade TOTALLY Lost Her Head...", published November 29, 2007.)

In the "Close Encounters ..." post, I alluded to Yahn attending Colorado College and living in a "residence hall" in Colorado Springs. And that was true ... he did take some classes at CC.... However, I neglected to mention that the "residence hall" was on the grounds of the private Emory John Brady psychiatric facility ... yep, a mental hospital. In the '60s it became, if not commonplace at least not terribly unusual, for affluent parents to sometimes "park" their unruly teenaged children in mental institutions (see the movie "Girl, Interrupted"). This is what had happened to Yahn after his first year at Western State College in Gunnison, where he and his friends there had sometimes taken the idea of "PAR-TAY" to an extreme level. Shortly after signing Yahn into the hospital (remember, the age of majority then was 21), his father was transferred to Randolph AFB in San Antonio, and as they would no longer be resident in the state, Tanner and Lorita (Yahn's parents) signed court commitment papers, making Yahn a ward of his psychiatrist, Dr. Gilbert O. Horn, "until further order of the Court." So, de facto and de jure, Dr. Horn had total control of Yahn's life (in loco parentis ... and don't get me started on "loco" parents) during the more than two years he was at Brady's. Some years later Dr. Horn was charged with 19 counts of gross negligence and blatant malpractice by the Colorado State board which governed psychiatrists.... But I digress....

Anyhoo, Yahn and I began dating, with the usual scenario being that I would drive down from Denver on Saturday, pick him up at the hospital, go to lunch, to a movie, dancing, (cheap) dinner, (cheap) whatever ... as long as I checked him back into the hospital no later than midnight. I would then find a quiet street, park my Mustang and sleep in the back seat ... the memory of those contortions still hurts), then visit with him at the hospital until late afternoon on Sunday before returning to Denver.

After more than a year of this, one day in mid-May 1968, during his regular weekly session with Yahn, Dr. Horn remarked that we seemed to be quite serious about each other ... and did we want to go ahead and get married? Well, duh!!! We had sooooo been looking forward to the day Yahn would be released and we could do just that ... and now Dr. Horn just casually dropped this opportunity into our laps! (I would be remiss if I did not say that one reason we rushed to take up Dr. Horn's offer instead of just waiting for Yahn's release is that at that time we had no intimation or real hope that Yahn would be released anytime soon ... he had really good insurance. which the hospital just loved to milk... and I had no legal standing to try to help him secure his release ... could in fact have been prosecuted for even trying.... But the marriage would give me legal standing as a spouse.)

We sprang into action to bring this miracle about before the end of May ... sorry, notwithstanding the urgency of the circumstances, I just absolutely refused to be a June bride ... and we only had about two weeks left in May to get the blood tests (remember those?), license, arrange for the ceremony to be performed, etc. Our next hurdle was to find a judge who would marry us in his chambers, since neither of us wanted a religious ceremony. And wonder of wonders, we did find a judge who agreed to marry us after court on Friday, May 31 ... the start of a long Memorial Day weekend (that was before they officially made "Memorial Day" the last Monday in May). But somehow we managed to put it all together.

And so, we were married ... with my father and his wife and six mental patients in attendance at our wedding!!!! Because the (other) mental patients weren't allowed to have any significant sums of money (they might buy a bus ticket and escape, you understand), our wedding gifts ran to beer can cigarette lighters, ashtrays and coasters made in occupational therapy (OT) at the hospital, things like that....

Our "honeymoon" consisted of one night at the Denver Hilton ... the most we could afford ... and when we arrived to check in, all we had was one suitcase that clanked because there was nothing in it but two bottles of cheap champagne. Yahn had never checked into a hotel before, and he has never been any good at filling out forms (as he will attest), so when he went to register at the hotel, his mind "blanked". After a loooooong pause, he turned to me and said in front of the desk clerk and manager: "Should I put 'Mr. and Mrs.', or what?" I almost died of embarrassment as the hotel personnel exchanged smirks. I told him to do that ... then Yahn wrote down what looked, in his handwriting, like Mr. and Mrs. JOHN SMITH. Raised eyebrows to go with the smirks. He blanked again on the next line ... and after another looooong pause, he said "What's our address?" The smirks were almost ear to ear ... and the eyebrows hit the hairline.... I said "Give me the card" and filled it out ... I was an interesting shade of fuscia by then, I'm sure. (You must remember that in those days it was illegal in many states for unmarried people of the opposite sex to share a hotel room together. We were actually expecting a visit by the house detective all night ... but it never happened.)

In honor of our nuptials, Dr. Horn actually let Yahn be away from the hospital from Friday noon through the weekend, but I had to return him (sort of like a library book) promptly at the stroke of noon on Monday!!! O bliss!!!! This pattern continued for the next few weeks, until Yahn was duly released from the hospital just over two months later ... without our having to take legal action ... and we were really able to begin our life as husband and wife. Conventional wisdom about marrying a mental patient (or me ... grin) to the contrary, we'll celebrate our 40th anniversary this year.

And amid all the beer can cigarette lighters, etc. ... I have one "gift" ... souvenir ... whatever ... that I still treasure ... and that I'll bet no one else in the class has. I have a letter from Dr. Horn (subsequent charges notwithstanding), stating unequivocally that my husband was sane enough to make the decision to marry me!!!!

Yahn and Jennifer at their wedding, May 31, 1968. Jennifer's father Keith is behind them.

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