Swap Shop

Life and marriage can have its ups and its down. Let’s hear the stories of three couples who had made it work for a combined 184 years: A.P. and Pat Guizerix, Ed and Mary Jayne Arthur, & Bill and Ann Stegall. A.P. and Pat Guizerix (65 years) Armand Paul (A.P.) Guizerix, II, was an in- structor at Audubon Park in New Orleans as- sisting with a class to prepare other teenagers on how to teach a Red Cross life-saving course to other people. A.P. said he got a call from a friend who was four years older that was in a bind. The friend was the instructor and was expecting around four students, however, the day before the class, he learned that twelve or more had signed up. The instructor friend said he got paid by the person (per student) and he would give A.P. a portion of the money. After he explained this to A.P., and being the true friend he was, A.P agreed to help because at the time he had nothing better to do. “I show up to help and they are all girls, and you can’t turn that down.” A.P. said he soon learned he would be the person the girls would drag around the pool demonstrating they knew how to rescue people. He said he met Pat by “just picking the best looking one there was.” A.P. was sixteen and Patricia (Pat) was fourteen years old at the time. He asked her if he could take her home? Pat said she would have to call her mother to get ap- proval. Her mother approved and told her to come straight home. A.P. followed the instructions as stated in his own words “straight home with no detours”. At time, Pat was a student at Fortier and A.P. was at Holy Cross. Without the pool encounter, odds are they would have never met. After the day they had first met, they went out a few times, but it soon ended. They both said “it just fizzled”. Pat said she recalls a conversation with her mother after returning home from their last date at that time. “I told her I doubted he would ask me out again. He was talking about this other girl and I just figured that it was over for us. My mother said don’t worry. She said he’s probably just waiting for you to grow up,” Pat said. Years later, the day before A.P. was to start classes at Tulane University, he was standing on a corner waiting for a bus to take him to Canal Street, when he sees these three girls walking down the street in his direction. A.P. was shocked when he realized one of them was Pat. He couldn’t believe it. “They came walking by and said hello, I said hello, and they keep walking. I knew right then when I saw Pat that day, she was the one forever. She was so beautiful that the other two girls looked like her shadow. That night I immediately looked in my notes, maybe a little black book or something, found her number, and called her to setup a date for that Friday night.” They began dating again and when Pat graduated high school and enrolled at Newcomb at Tulane, he gave her his fraternity pin as a sign of his commitment. “I was not about to let this pretty young girl go over there with all those freshmen guys without doing something,” A.P. said with a smile as big as Texas. A.P. was enrolled in the Naval ROTC program at Tulane for all four years as a student and when he graduated from Tulane, A.P. was commissioned to go to Newport, Rhode Island, on August 12, 1957. They got married the next day and after the wedding they loaded up their things and drove to Newport where A.P. was to go on- board a ship. A.P. spent his required minimum two years in the Navy. They stayed in Newport one year and their first child, Skipper, was born during that time. The sec- ond year, A.P. was transferred to Washington, D.C. to work a staff job. After the year in D.C., the Navy ‘sweet talked” him into enlisting for one more year of active duty and they sent him to their subordinate staff in New Or- leans. “As far as we were concerned, we were going home,” A.P. said grinning. In New Orleans, their second child, David, was born. After that year, A.P. was now looking for a civilian job, but this was during the aftermath of what at the time was re- ferred to as the ‘Eisenhower Recession’. A.P. explained how things played out favorably for he and his family. “I was applying for jobs with no results when my Dad told me I should apply with Gulf Oil Company. He had a friend who was one of the top people in New Orleans. So I went there, applied, and shortly after they had three people interview me. They drilled me for two days about my science background. They offered me a job, and I was so excited, but when they hired me, they shipped me off to Hattiesburg.” www.southernsenior.info 7 Marriage Is Alive! By: Carey Meitzler