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| Still
time to call it off, said her mother |
One
of the GI brides from Wethersfield was 21-year-old Pat Weavers. As she was
about to leave the house for her wedding her mother tried one last time
to persuade her not to marry the romantically named Charlie Love. She had
met Charlie, an airman from the base, three years before by chance on Wethersfield
village green.
Looking back on more than 40 years of life in America Pat said: “I
didn’t regret it.”
“The first few years were hard, I was homesick. But I started a family
and I said ‘It’s up to me what life I make of it’. The
marriage didn’t work out but we were married 13 years.” In fact
many of the GI brides’ marriages failed.
“The whole village thought it was terrible having an American boyfriend,”
said Pat. “You were a silly person to get involved with a foreigner.
That was the attitude.”
Pat said her family never spoke out against the match. She knew her mother
wasn’t keen on the idea because she refused her consent until Pat
was 21. |
Pat was in love
- with Charlie Love |
“Children
are more advanced now than we were back then. I look back and think how
stupid I was. Children were seen and not heard.” Travel was not something
that entered their lives. Like most village girls she had never seen a black
man until the Americans arrived at the base and the way they were treated
in some states of America then was a severe shock to Pat.
“Where I went first I felt they were way behind us here, because of
the blacks and slavery and that, it was real bad when I went there. They
were still segregated. I felt sorry for the black people.”
But America slowly took hold of Pat and she of it. “Each state is
like another country. Each has its own weather, different ways; we govern
ourselves more or less in each state. I’ve been to different States
but I feel more at home in South Carolina.
“ Looking back I have enjoyed my life. I have had a good time." |
from Wethesfield-Essex co., UK
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