A Memorial Day Story

Back in the 1930s, the little town of Elkton, Maryland, Maryland was a happening place if you needed to get hitched in a hurry. Maryland did not have the waiting period that other states had imposed, and Elkton was conveniently located near the Pennsylvania line, not too far from New York, New Jersey or Delaware. Wedding chapels and hotels stood at the ready on main street just waiting for fresh business. Both Debbie Reynolds and Joan Fontaine got married here. So did Cornell Wilde.

And my parents, George and Bebe Cokinos. As it turns out, unlike the celebrities, their marriage actually did stand the test of time, despite the odds. George was a Greek American born in Washington, DC, but his parents were both from Greece and did not want him to marry outside the Hellenic community.  He was just seventeen when he fell hard for my very pretty, very white mother who was almost two years younger.

They both went to Western High school, and they soon became inseparable. My Greek grandparents were not happy campers. My other grandmother was alarmed as well. She sent Bebe off to live with her sister in Ohio for a while, hoping to distract her, but my mother wrote George every day. George was nineteen and Bebe only seventeen when they snuck off to Elkton to be married on Memorial Day 1935.  (Back then the holiday happened on May 30th, and was not the weekend event it is now.)

The newlyweds did not have enough money to spend the night, but their buddy Fred Brown took them out for a fried chicken dinner to celebrate before taking the happy couple back down to D.C. where they had absolutely no plan. None. Neither George nor Bebe felt brave enough to tell their parents what they had done, so they went back to their own homes and hunkered down until they could figure out how to break the news.  No-one could have predicted that a marriage, based solely on the passion and recklessness of young love, would last, but they were lucky. Despite the bumpy start, they were together truly and exactly 'til death did they part- a mere seventy two years later.

Life on the Runway or How to Save with an Electric Range

My mother spent the first half of her life raising children, working in Churchill's, the family bar and grill on Macomb Street, and coping with all things domestic including various dogs and a parakeet from Hawaii. But once the early hard ships of the Depression and World War Two were over, Bebe was ready to do something completely different. The Pepco ad above which originally appeared in 1950 in the Washington Post might have been one of her first gigs.  She had three teenage children at home at the time and was just embarking on a modeling career which would lead to fashion shows at DC's now disappeared department stores Woodies and Garfinckel's. She also did runway shows at the Mayflower and the Shoreham.

(Click on the pictures to enlarge... I love that woman's expression in the front row.)

Bebe made many modeling friends along the way, all of whom were on the "mature" side." They called themselves the Model Ts.  I don't know who the dude is in the middle, but wouldn't you think he'd be happier? Maybe his knees were killing him.

In May 1955 my sister and grandmother got into the act at a Mother's Day show for Lansburgh's Department Store. "Three Generations in Size 9!" exclaimed the caption. Both Bebe and her mother were asked what a woman might like to do on Mother's Day. My grandmother replied that she wanted to take her whole family back to Honolulu, and everyone would get a "pikaleili lei." Bebe wished that she could spend the whole day in bed with meals brought to her, then she wanted to go out dancing in the evening.  I'm pretty sure those weren't the answers the reporter was looking for because "getting down to brass tacks" Bebe added that models always needed "thousands of stockings."

Dig the crazy lids on these gals.

My sister had a daisy perched on hers.

The picture below featured in one of the Washington papers carried the description: "Dedicated to the Woman Who Cannot Make Up Her Mind. These two forward looking suits can go South now or do summer duty here later on."

I don't know where they were going, but they do look ready for anything a the time.

In the late winter of 1958, Bebe made the news again by wading through snow drifts to hitch a ride for her and "her hatbox."

She made it just in time to change out of boots and ski pants and into spring togs for a fashion luncheon at the Shoreham's Blue Room.

Later that year in June, Bebe entered a bathing beauty contest put on by the radio station WGAY for women over 40. She won second prize which was a backyard swimming pool the likes of which I never saw because she turned it down.

What? !

Yes. She turned it down and was quoted as saying: "I don't swim if I can help it. I'm strictly an indoor girl." A bit ironic considering how many bathing suits 'the mature mermaid' had to model for this event.

Here's a picture of the winner. No offense to Mrs  Rebecca Magnuson of Silver Spring, but  I think my mom, Miss Number 2, got rooked. You be the judge:

Bebe pretty much hung up her guns after that one, not necessarily because she was over forty or a sore loser, but probably because she got pregnant with me. She remained beautiful all her life of course, both inside and out, and now I know why my father never stopped giving her stockings.