Anniversaries: My Husband’s Grandparents Married 80 Years Ago Today

William Wallace and Jean Alice (Harless) Greene, in Arizona during a quick weekend away from college to get married.

Eighty years ago today, my husband’s grandparents — William Wallace “Wally” Greene (b. 1908) and Jean Alice Harless (b. 1912) — married in Maricopa County, Arizona.

I don’t know much about their marriage. I don’t have a copy of their marriage license or any wedding photos of the two of them together. I am sure I can ask their children for these (Jean and Wally are both deceased)…just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I like to try to hunt these types of things down for myself.

I am not even sure how they met. Wally hailed from Arizona, Jean grew up in San Francisco, California and came from a family with long ties to the Bay Area and northern California. Wally attended college and medical school at Stanford University…so they must have met at that time.

My husband and I need to make the time to talk to their children and find out more about Jean and Wally’s courtship, wedding, and early marriage. I tend to be really bad about spending time on more immediate ancestors, focusing instead on more distant discoveries. But the stories of our immediate families are just as important, and I want to be able to pass down the story of Wally and Jean to our own children. So perhaps this task will be a goal I set for this year.