True Love Stories: Speeding along the highway to love

Bob and Ruth were destined to meet - I say destined because of the circumstance: Bob was stationed at U.S. Marine Corps Pickel Meadows and would come into Carson City on his days off to relieve the Carson City sheriff's deputies.

Ruth, never known for obeying speed limits, was stopped by the deputy in September 1955. Ruth was given the option to attend the Candy Dance in Genoa with the deputy or take the speeding ticket - and so the romance began.

Bob would often visit Ruth while she was working at the Silver Spur. The attraction was obvious considering she would announce over the intercom, "We have another Silver Pot Jack Spur winner." It's tough to get the words out correctly when the person you are enamored with is in the room sitting with your boss.

Bob and Ruth said their I dos March 23, 1956, in Gardnerville, after driving all night to find a judge to marry them. Their search began in Carson City, the town where they had met, the town where their first child, a daughter, was born, and a town they would come back to after 24 years serving in the U.S. Marine Corps.

That evening their search took them from Carson City, to Virginia City, to Reno, then finally ending in Gardnerville where the judge at midnight would pronounce them man and wife.

The next 24 years would take them many places where the other three Pier children would join the family. The photo albums in our home tell the story - the story of my father holding the two oldest daughters before boarding a plane for his first tour of duty in Korea. The story of my mother and the four of us children dressed in our Sunday best for Easter and Christmas. Of these photos, some were sent to my father during his second tour in Korea, then others were sent during his third tour of duty in Vietnam.

These photos show our parents coaching our softball and football teams, chaperoning the ski bus, teaching all our friends to water ski at Lake Lahontan, four Carson City High School graduations, then on to the marriages and the grandchildren, all 10 having been born at Carson Tahoe Hospital. Three of their great-grandchildren were born there, as well. The photos of what Norman Rockwell might define as "The Love Story of an American Family."

After 54 years of marriage, it's funny to hear my mom say, "I should have taken the ticket."

Teri Purvis

Carson City