True Romance: Dallas couple’s joining is 70 years strong

Hard work and joining run low in Ira Trees.

His great-grandparents, Anna Kimmel and Crawford Trees, were a initial integrate ever married in Dallas County. When Anna indispensable a dress for her matrimony in 1846, she done it herself of homespun. When a integrate indispensable a home, their families built a one-room cabin during Cedar Hill, according to a 1919 story in The Dallas Morning News.

When a Civil War pennyless out, Crawford went off to fight, withdrawal Anna to take caring of a plantation and their 10 children.

The Trees’ great-grandson, Ira, hereditary that work ethic. He helped his father in a plumbing business from an early age, dropping out of high propagandize to work full time.

Later, after a supervision pursuit ended, Ira returned to Dallas and married Lillian Creech, a lady he’d been honeyed on given third category during Trinity Heights Elementary School.

“I knew from a word go that we was going to marry her,” he says. “She was a best-looking lady in a class.”

Ira disheartened a other boys, Lillian says, quite during a Friday dances in youth high.

“He managed to dance with me so a other boys couldn’t,” says Lillian, 87.

By youth high, he’d given her an rendezvous ring. They were about 16 when he bought a cedar wish chest in that they collected silverware and a mixer.

They were married on Dec. 13, 1942, in a preacher’s investigate during First Baptist Church Waxahachie, with another integrate in attendance.

Since they were usually 17, “we had to take a notation from her mom to get married,” Ira says. At a time, many underage couples in North Texas who wanted to marry headed to Oklahoma, where accede wasn’t required.

“I consider gasoline had something to do with it,” Lillian explains of a wartime gas rationing that kept them tighten to home.

After a ceremony, they had a dish and changed in with his parents.

“I know one thing: It was beef and gravy or potatoes, since that’s all we would eat,” says Ira, also 87, adding that his mom pennyless him of that habit.

When they got married, “Honey, we couldn’t boil water, though we learned” from Ira’s mother, Lillian says.

Soon, Ira perceived a call of duty.

“He knew a notation he incited 18, he’d be drafted, and he was,” says Lillian.

Just like his forerunner Crawford, off Ira went to war, portion with a Navy, mostly in a South Pacific. He got a week’s puncture leave when their initial daughter, Sandra, was innate in 1944.

After portion for about dual and a half years, Ira came home to a housing shortage, so a integrate changed into one of a Quonset huts indifferent for returning servicemen.

“We suspicion we were in sky since we were vital by ourselves,” Ira says.

When they were about 25, they built their initial residence in a Glendale Park area. Friends, including a carpenter, electrician and a painter, supposing help. Ira rubbed a plumbing.

“I never cut so many pieces of hardwood flooring in my life,” Lillian says.

A second daughter, Cindy, was innate in 1953. (The Trees have 3 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren.)

Later, they changed to an unit and afterwards to a Dallas residence they have lived in for some-more than 40 years — about 8 miles from a ancestral birthplace of Anna and Crawford Trees.

Ira continued to make a good vital as a plumber until a pursuit damage forced him to retire during 49 and laid him adult for about dual years.

There have been some adjustments to their normal roles of breadwinner and homemaker.

The Trees’ daughter Cindy jokes that her father would rather starve than prepare for himself, though when her mom grown pulmonary hypertension, Ira eased her weight by cooking and cleaning.

“His daddy put him to work genuine young, and it stuck,” Lillian says. “He knew what work and shortcoming were.”

In a relationship, “you have to give and take,” she says. “It’s never 50-50.”

“Her uncle told me when we got married, ‘When we get mad, get in a automobile and leave. Don’t argue,’” Ira says. “I consider that had a whole lot to do with creation a good marriage.”

“When we got married, everybody pronounced it wasn’t going to last,” Lillian says.

Those friends have all upheld away, though a Trees’ kinship stays clever 70 years later.

“We kind of grew on any other. we don’t know what it was — robe or what,” Lillian says. “Whatever it was, it was flattering good, ’cause it lasted.”

If we have a True Romance story, email Laura Schwed during lschwed@dallasnews.com.

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