45 Years After Their Vows – Family Backstories

Today, January 31, 2021, marks exactly 45 years since my parents married. This is the first year they’re both in heaven for their anniversary. Dad’s been gone for nearly 21 years, and after he passed, mom remarried an amazing man. Still, this day always marks sadness and happiness for me since I arrived later in the year that they married.

So, here’s a little backstory. This is based on a conversation I had with my mom at her house in 2019, the year before she unexpectedly passed away.

Mom, Margaret “Peggy” Munns, had graduated from Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1974. She wanted to teach high school Spanish and French just as she had student-taught that spring at Wahlert High School in Dubuque. But the jobs had all dried up.

“When I was a junior, Iowa colleges dropped foreign language as a requirement. Students stopped taking high school Spanish. Competition for jobs was unbelievable. I interviewed many places, but they always picked people with experience,” mom told me.

So, she moved back home to the family farm near Rock Rapids, Iowa. She worked a bit locally and throughout northwest Iowa. The next year in 1975, she met my dad, Mark Edward Payne, when he was working construction in Rock Rapids.

“The first time I saw him was at the soda fountain at Rexall’s on a Sunday morning. We officially met later at a bar in Rock Rapids,” mom recalled. “I can’t remember the name of it then, but now it’s next to Rexall’s to the south, where there’s now an accounting firm. It was called Bar Street. There were four places on that one block.”

Rexall's Corner, Rock Rapids — Rexall Drugs is where mom first saw dad at the soda fountain, of which there’s a mural on the building today. In 1975, they first met in a bar that was to the right of Rexall down this street.

Dad was from southern Iowa/northwest Missouri. He was born in Mt. Ayr, Iowa, and was a year behind my mom in high school — even though they were just seven months apart. Dad never went to college, so after high school, he worked various jobs (mostly in construction, which brought him to Rock Rapids).

My maternal grandparents didn’t really approve of mom and dad dating. Dad was a little too wild for their tastes. Mom and dad married in southern Iowa, in the house of one of dad’s relatives. He wore a crazy plaid suit coat to go along with his curly, long, 70s hair. Mom wore a beautiful v-neck dress with daisies on it that perfectly suited her tastes, matched her flowers and fit with her love of daisies.

Just like all marriages, it wasn’t perfect, but it did produce four pretty awesome people who are proud of their parents beyond belief.

Love and miss you, mom and dad.

Slainte! ~EPJ