Our parents, Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Stevens were married 60 years on January, 27th [1964] and I can truthfully say they still look wonderful to us.

My mother tells me that the wedding day, sixty years ago was foggy. They set off from Tancook for Chester in a sixteen-foot open, sailboat. After a while the fog lifted, the wind came off from the North and their small boat was tossed about like a cork.

They were married in a hotel called the "Seaview House', and because of the high wind stayed in Chester overnight.

Their life together has not been a "bed of roses", but their devotion was a bright star that lightened the pathway of life and made the harsh places endurable.

Few married couples have the same likes and dislikes and in this, my parents were quite normal. For my father was born a "son of the sea", and put off from the shore almost as soon as he could walk, on anything that would stay afloat.

My mother, from a small child, has been terrified of all large bodies of water. One of my earliest memories is of coming downstairs in the morning to find "Pop" gone, and "Mom" watching the window facing Chester with a worried look on her face.

She would explain to us that Mrs. So and So had taken sick at night and her husband had come pounding on the door at 3 a.m. for Randolph to go to Chester for the doctor.

And Randolph never refused. He went in all kinds of weather, sometimes rowing the five miles to Chester and back again. He and his brother-in-law, Reuben Heisler seemed to be the accepted doctor bringers and as far as I know they never took a cent for their services. Engines were not in common use then and they sailed or rowed, as the need may be.

For a nerve-racking sideline how about bearing children on an Island where you never knew if the doctor would arrive before the stork? As you can imagine the stork got there first several times.

Very early in life my father had the urge to try his hand at sailmaking. His first venture was for a boat known then as a "big deck boat", probably today, called a schooner. Lacking space to spread out his canvas he took the rolls on a hand sleigh down to "Hatt's" pond and cut his first suit of sails under a wintry sky with the swell of the Atlantic almost at his feet.

The sails were stitched on our home sewing machine in the sitting room with my mother hovering around, offering encouragement and bits of information from her sewing experience. The children reveled in this new turn of events. In the crowded room the sails, of necessity had to be bunched together, forming inviting tunnels and tents that provided no end of fun for the young fry. Our fun in the tunnels lasted only until one of us yanked on the canvas causing a crooked seam and then we were paddled and made to sit on chairs until bed time.

Our parents brought us through countless epidemics of childhood illnesses. The first, in my memory, was smallpox. It was around Christmas and a certain woman storekeeper on Tancook kept secret the fact that a member of her family had contracted smallpox while in Halifax. Sometime after Christmas my father came down with chills and fever and after a certain number of days broke out in a terrible rash that itched and burned frightfully. Our minister came to see him and pronounced the disease as smallpox. To see Pop sick was a shattering experience for us. We were quarantined for what seemed a lifetime as one after the other got the disease.

When Mom went to bed with smallpox a doctor called, for she was pregnant at the time and Grandma Stevens considered her case serious enough to warrant a doctor's visit. The doctor was brought, a tall man in a long, black overcoat and fur cap. He looked at her, red and swollen, and gravely predicted the death of either the mother or child at birth.

But it was not to be. The following summer our house had to be repaired and renovated and we moved, bag and baggage , into the new sail loft while the carpenters were working at the house. Up there, one hot July morning, with the air sweet with the scent of clover and the Song Sparrows pouring out their hearts in song in the pasture, my brother, Harold was born. And wouldn't you know what his occupation is? He's a sailmaker!

Time moved on and there were more babies and other emergencies. One of the worst was brought about by my own disobedience. I was big enough to go to school and also to run errands to the store. This Saturday I was sent for groceries and warned that under no circumstances was I to go inside the house, just to pass my note and money to the woman and wait outside until she came out, as her son had measles. I remembered the admonition until I arrived at the store and told the woman I must not go in. But it didn't take much coaxing to break down my feeble defence and the sight of candies inside pulled me like a magnet.

The incident left my mind completely until I had to leave school one day and be taken home, sick.

Grandma Stevens was called and as soon as she entered the house she said, "I smell measles." Then, my mother questioned me, and measles it was. ("Father in Heaven, what will I do if all these children get measles, and I didn't have them myself?")

Of course there were luminous spots too among the dark clouds, and one of the brightest was when my three brothers came back from the war.

They took their family responsibilities seriously. We were so drilled in manners, morals and spiritual matters that I sometimes wonder if it was not a terrible let down to have us grow up as ordinary human beings.

One thing we can all say, all nine of us; they were wonderful parents; they were fair and treated us with equal punishment or like indulgence. They were devoted to us and to each other and in turn we are devoted to them.