For email at
clayho@bellsouth.net
Patricia Graf and Clayton Houston were married shortly after graduation on August 8, 1956, in Owensboro, KY. We celebrated our 60th anniversary; now 61.
Then after the wedding, away we went to Baltimore MD to work for Clay to work at The Martin Co. We found an apartment in Towsend MD and honeymooned daily to DC. We got to see Pat brother and wife from Norfolk a couple times.
Nine months and a week later we had Bill. Pat, though a Registered Nurse, never got started working while in Baltimore.
We had Bob while there and got one vacation to visit the home town of Owensboro, KY. At that time, there were few if any interstate highways and traveling was miserable even in our new '56 Olds Holiday Club Coupe.
At that time Clay was in the aero-flight test group on the P6M Seamaster and saw an ad in AW for Lockheed in Marietta. One of the group leaders (Chet Payne) announced his going there the day Clay wrote for an application. He allowed Clay to reference him. It was a miserable drive and we arrived on Friday night on the 2 lane road going by the Big Chicken. We thought we ought to go back to Baltimore but 58 years later we're still here.
In the 58 years here, we had 5 more children. One daughter was killed in an auto accident at age 18. We lived at the current address for 55 years but had a lot of field trips where we were able to take the kids and even the Mother and Mother-in-Law. My Mother lived with us in her private apartment for 20 years until she got difficult and we were fortunate to have her live with her older sister in IN.
We had 2 family trips to El Centro, CA for 3 mos and 5 mos and 1 to Lancaster, CA for 9 mos. When Lockheed moved Flight Test to Palmdale, CA, Pat and Clay spent 2 years there. Clay did have a 7 mo trip to Sunnyvale, CA; in fact, for a white collar desk job he had to spend 4 years off-site during his time at Lockheed. He did get to Japan, Sweden, England, Hawaii, Alaska and considering vacation, got to all except ND & NE. Last year, the kids took us on an early cruise to the Caribbean for our 50th.
After 15 years as a stay-at-home Mom, Pat got back to RNing it. This was when our youngest got into school. She went into Mental Health. She worked and retired from Kennestone Hospital. She had several years at Deverex. After all, it was about like raising 7 kids. She even worked the 2 years at the Palmdale Medical Center.
We both retired at 62 and as of now, it's been 21 years of fun.
The kids have turned out GREAT. We are proud parents (6), grand-parents (15) and great-grand-parents (11) as you can guess.
All six of our living children went to and graduated from a technical college. Four from Georgia Tech, one from Emory University and one from University of Texas. They all married college graduates.