The first Saturday in September Morris took Barbara out to a movie and then to the Varsity dinner afterwards for a bite to eat after returning Barbara to her home, Morris drove home a happy man.  He was going to work on his car on Sunday so he would not see her until the following Friday, or so he thought.   

That Sunday, Barbara got up a bit late and went to the kitchen for breakfast. While at the table her mother and father told her “After breakfast go pack your things up, we are taking you to the college tomorrow.” Barbara was in shock, sure her father and mother had mentioned the college a few times since they visited it, but she never thought she would actually go.  What was she to do? Barbara wrote in her memoirs, “What could she do but obey.” and she spent the day packing and doing a lot of crying.  What upset Barbara the most was that she hadn’t told Morris anything about going to college, and with Morris not having a telephone at his house there was no way she could let him know that day.   

The next morning Barbara left with her parents to go Trinity Bible College.  On the way there, Barbara at first tried to tell her parents she didn’t want to go but they said she was going and that was that, so she sat quietly in the back seat mostly thinking about what she was going to tell Morris.  Upon arriving at the college, she got checked in while her mother and father went to visit with their friend Dr. Watson, the college president. A couple of the girls on the welcome committee helped Barbara with her belongings and showed her to her room helped get her get settled in.  A short time later her parents showed up at her room, wished her well and said their goodbyes.  Barbara sat their stunned for a while, staring out the windows thinking of Morris and what was she going to do.   Well, the first thing was to write Morris a letter explaining what happened which she mailed the next day.  

Morris not knowing all that had transpired, the following week wrote Barbara a letter to her home in Oklawaha asking how she was and telling her that him and Charlie went to Reddick to watch the boys practice football and that he would see her Saturday about four in the afternoon.  The next day he got the letter from Barbara telling him that she was at the college, that she didn’t want to go but her parents made her.  Morris didn’t know what to make of it, so much for their date the following Saturday.  

In the following days Barbara got settled in and registered for classes. One thing Barbara really disliked was the food at the Collage cafeteria, so she went to the nearby A&P store and bought a box of candy, a box of cookies, four pears, a package of potato chips and six donuts, two of which she ate right then.  One problem she had was, not working, she didn’t have the ten dollars to pay for the pots she had on layaway and asked Morris if he could pay it come the first of October but telling him , “Darling if you don’t want, please let me know.  But It sure would help.”  To help out Barbara wrote to the store manager asking if he could cut the payments to eight dollars a month which he said he would do.

While Barbara’s letter was on its way to Morris it crossed path with a letter Morris had written the same day to Barbara.  After her classes were done for the day, Barbara stopped at the small room at the school that was used for a post office and was excited to see she got a letter from Morris.  She immediately went out on the front porch of the school and opened it reading, “Well guess you’ll be surprised at what I’m going to tell you.“, Morris began.

Updated: 01-07-2022

Shock of her life..