Chapter Three

Chapter three - the Blog continues. After our marriage we lived in Huntington at the “old home place.” Mother had left the house to our one sister. It had been subdivided for an apartment upstairs so we were able to live there rent free and look after things including an apartment on the back which Dad had had built for our oldest brother. He wa no longer there. We had not been married many months before my bride sidled up to me after a visit with the doctor and with some animation said, “We’re going to have a baby.” Ken was born in late February. We were married April 14th the previous year - you do the math.

After Ken a born it occurred to me that if I was to get any place as a College teacher I’d better get a Ph.D. In the third year at Marshall I was admitted to Penn State and granted a fellowship in the Speech Education department with the understanding that I would eventually be working on the doctorate in
Clinical Psychology. Betty and Ken stayed with her parents in West Virginia for most of that year. We did managed to buy a house in Bellefonte, PA in the summer of 1950, but I was not admitted to the Ph.D. program in Psych so it was necessary to move on. Brother John was working in Iowa and knew that they were looking for a Psychologist at a couple of children’s homes. I met the man in charge of that program and became Clinical Psychologist at the Annie Wittenmyer Home in Davenport and the State Juvenile Home in Toledo, IA. Both were for “dependent and neglected children.” IAWH had kids from birth to late teens. Many of them were placed in homes as foster children. The Home at Toledo to mostly late childhood and adolescents who were often pre-delinquent. I was able to pick up some extra cash by giving personality tests for some local Psychiatrists.

Living in the Mississippi River country with farms and fields galore it wasn’t long before I was having trouble with hay fever. The other thing that gave me trouble was my earlier intention to give my life in service to the Church and Christ. By the fourth year I was sleeping sitting up in a lounge chair since my who system closed off when I laid down. Antihistamines didn’t do much good, and was increasingly being led to make the decision to go to Seminary. I was convinced that God was working on my to make that decision. After exploring possible Seminaries it seemed that Andover Newton was the place to go. That had a strong Clinical Pastoral training program. When I finally decided that Seminary was a must I talked it over with Betty. By this time we had Ken, Ann, and Jim; and David was in utero. Her only response was, “You’d better take me with you.” And that’s the way it has always been. Chapter four later.