My Mom & Dad’s Wedding
The Runaway Bride, 1956 Edition
I met Dennis Mitchell in April, 1956, when I was a finalist for “Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.” The Sweetheart dance was held in Charlotte and I went with a boy I had never dated before. After the formal dance—I was not selected as Sweetheart, my sorority sister was and she ended up marrying a Kappa Sig—there was an after party at a local bar and that is where I first saw my future husband.
I had just listened to the 1956 recording of Count Basie playing “April in Paris” (“One more time! One more, once!). It was 62 years ago that Count Basie was playing for German Weekend at Chapel Hill. My date was someone else—Denny had a blind date—but the afternoon of the concert, out on the baseball field, we were sitting right behind each other. We had met the week before and I was just over the moon about him.
It was truly love at first sight. That weekend was just one of the beginnings of a long relationship. I was just a girl (20), he was just a boy (22), but it was meant to be and it lasted because we both gave it our best.
After I had met Denny in Charlotte at the dance we saw each other again at the Germans’ concert and then finally one weekend spent with friends in Charlotte before he left for San Antonio and the Air Force, and I went home. My father was retiring from the Army and we were moving back to Oregon.
After we got to Medford I asked my father if I could return to Chapel Hill for my senior year via San Antonio so I could see Denny. He told me that I could do that but that I would have to earn the difference it would cost by going that way instead of going directly. My aunt found me a job at Pinnacle Pear Company earning minimum wage, which was $1.00 an hour in those days.
I earned $100 and when I took the money to my father he said that he only wanted to see how badly I want to go to see Denny and that I could keep the money. I took the train to San Antonio, spent a week, and we decided to get married. Two weeks later, on Saturday, September 15, 1956, we were married at St. John’s Catholic Church in Hondo, Texas.
—Shannon Mitchell
