A New York Wedding

I have written about New York, New Jersey and Long Island as I remember them from childhood.  But New York City was an important location later in my life as well.  It was the scene of my first wedding, which took place on Sept. 2, 1947 in the elegant St. Regis Hotel.  I was 22 years old.  Christian was 26.

I came to NYC from the University of Chicago ostensibly to visit Uncle Jack and Auntie Rita.  But I had been corresponding with Christian Bay, a Norwegian political scientist whom I had recently met at the university.  Christian encouraged me to come to New York City, which I did.  To prolong his stay in the US, he had taken a one year job at the Norwegian Information Office, located at Rockefeller Plaza.  He was six feet tall, (I am five feet) slim and attractive in a professorial way.  (He wore heavy tortoise-shell glasses.)  His thick strawberry-blond hair was slicked down with pomade.  He had an old-fashioned kind of  “chivalry” with women.  One of my girl friends used to say, “If he is sitting talking with you at a party, you feel that you are the most important person in the world.”  I was also impressed by the fact that he had served as a judge in minor Quisling trials in postwar Norway, in his mid 20s.

He had a degree in law from the University of Oslo.  I knew my mother would approve of him, as she did.  Eventually she loved him as a son, but the feeling was not reciprocated.  Christian was impressed by the fact that I had worked for almost a year as a Labor Organizer for Amalgamated Clothing Workers, C10, in small Pennsylvania towns.  He was an active member of the Socialist-Labor Party, which was in power in Norway at that time. 

In New York City we had lunches together.  He invited me to a formal dance at International House, where he was living.  At one point he told me he wanted to rent a car and explore the Deep South, to drive to New Orleans.  He wanted me to come along.  I was shocked by the suggestion.  I was a 22 year-old virgin, who had done very little dating in high school and college.  I said, “I couldn’t possibly do that!”  He said, “Well, let’s get married then.”  And so we did. 

There was just one thing that troubled me:  his belief in sexual freedom within marriage.  He had gotten that idea from a book by Bertrand Russell.  I couldn’t understand why he wanted to marry, if he believed in sexual freedom.  That turned out to be an important issue in our relationship.

We talked about doing social research projects together cross-culturally, writing books together as Sidney and Beatrice Webb did.  We wrote our own wedding service in which we said we would have many friends in our home, to share our happiness.  I still have the wedding service somewhere in this house. Even though we had a friendly divorce long ago, we both remarried and he has been dead for many years.

I recently saw a photo of myself as a radiant young bride. That was one of the happiest experiences in my life. I had been brought up with the idea that my goal in life should be to “marry well,” have a nice husband who would provide for me as my Mother had done, a home of my own in a nice residential suburb, and children. My Mother was very happy about our plan to get married.  In those days girls were expected to marry and remain at home.  A girl who wanted a career for herself was a rarity.  I felt very happy to have found this nice young man who wanted to marry me. 

She arranged and paid for a very elegant little wedding at the St. Regis Hotel.  Our Unitarian minister from Pittsburgh, Rev. Irving Murray came to New York to marry us.  We wrote the words of the service ourselves.  Since I had recently been a Labor Organizer, and never cared about fancy weddings, I wanted a very simple ceremony.  I wore an unadorned, off-white, cocktail-length dress.  My wedding ring cost $6.00.  (I still have it.)  Uncle Jack walked me down the aisle.  I hadn’t yet reconnected with my long lost father.

We had twenty guests, including our minister, my Mother and Granny, Uncle Jack and Auntie Rita, their 17 year-old son, John, and his girlfriend Sally, and even my Russian dancing school teacher from childhood and her husband (she was an old friend of the family.)  Christian invited some of his friends, including a cousin from Ohio.

After the brief ceremony, we all sat down at a long narrow table to have supper.  A long-distance call from Oslo interrupted the meal.  Christian’s parents called to wish us a long and happy life together.  We were all ecstatically happy.