On Sept. 16, 1946, my parents said “I do” during a Nuptial Mass at St. Anne’s Cathedral in Great Falls, Montana.
The former Marcia Sweeney and Adrian Bailey both grew up on farms — she on a grain and livestock farm near Larimore, North Dakota, and he on a ranch near Stanford, Montana. They met through my dad’s sister who had been my mom’s roommate and best friend for several years while he was serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II. During the years my dad was in the service, he was her friend’s brother, who, like many soldiers,enjoyed receiving letters.
After the war, their pen-pal friendship developed into love and marriage. ADVERTISEMENT Although my dad went to college on the GI Bill after they were married and earned a business degree, he couldn’t see himself working in an office, and he wanted his children to live near their grandparents, something he had missed experiencing. So when my mom’s father, Jay, asked him a couple of years after they were married if he wanted to farm with him, my dad said “yes.
” In 1950, my mom, dad and two older brothers, Mike and Terry, who were born in Great Falls, moved to a farm just down the road from my mom’s parents, and my dad began farming. Besides grain and row crops, my parents, like most farmers in those days, also raised livestock: pigs, sheep and beef cattle, feeder cattle and milked a half dozen Holstein cows, selling the cream to the dairy in Larimore. My parents had three more children — Ri.