October 2, 2013

Carl and Gladys Allen Stancil

For my first Wedding Wednesday, the very best place I can think of to start is with my very own mom and dad.

They met at a square dance in Raleigh. Mom was there to flirt, I'm sure. Daddy was calling the dance. They told me it was love at first sight.

Carl Donald STANCIL and Ann Gladys ALLEN married on May 3, 1952 at the North Street Baptist Church in downtown Raleigh, NC. It was a Monday morning. 

Daddy was in the Marine Corps stationed at Camp Lejeune, NC  about 2.5 hours southeast of Raleigh. He was home on leave but about to deploy. He was a boy from the wrong side of the tracks trying to make a better life by joining the military. Mom was a country girl who didn't want to be a country girl.  She married a Marine, and in doing so, saw the world and met interesting people. Her dream came true.

They wanted children. When it didn't happen naturally, they worked to adopt two Korean orphan boys. Daddy had been struck by the many orphans left behind after the Korean war. The adoption was progressing and daddy made plans to fly to Seoul to pick up his boys. Then mom became pregnant. It happens.

They were stationed at Diamond Head in Hawaii. Hawaii wasn't yet a state in early 1959, so the military shipped my mother back to the states to have her baby. Worse, adoption plans were nixed because rules at the time stated expecting couples or those with a child under 6 months old could not adopt. You know the saying, "Man Plans, God Laughs".

You may notice mom's last name on the marriage license. It's not her maiden name - Allen. Guess this wasn't her first rodeo. 

They were married 45 years when daddy died February 1997. Mom died 10 weeks later of a broken heart. 





She was so beautiful and he was amazingly handsome. Don't you agree?


Carl Donald Stancil
Ann Gladys Allen Stancil






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