Grace McSpadden married James Arthur Overholser on March 30, 1937, in Austin.
Back at the manse in Smyrna, Tennessee, she writes to her parents of her happiness: “We have a great deal of fun every day playing and singing on the piano, washing and drying dishes, going out and seeing how the flowers and the garden is growing, and just being in love. I don’t miss anything — I’m having the time of my life and enjoying it immensely.”
For the next dozen years, her life would be a series of moves from one small southern town to another while Jim sought to move up in the ministry, to conclude his graduate education — and to find escape from his disappointed hopes. Meanwhile, Grace would give birth to three children, sing in the choir, seek to be a model minister’s wife, keep house in one new home after another, and struggle to make ends meet.
Still prone to self-reflection — and a touch of judgmentalism — she continues to write notes to herself. She hears some mothers complaining about their children marrying and being “gone forever,” and writes, “Things I am anxious to avoid doing when I grow old and have children and grandchildren: losing all interest in everything except what my children do and say; talking unless I am in conversation with some person about some special thing; and getting into the middle-age habit of looking backward instead of finding renewed joy in what life holds — if not for me then for the world. I am not the only thing in it.”
Grace and Jim soon moved to a new ministry, in Blytheville, Arkansas. Their first child, a daughter, is born. Grace’s letters, now to both sets of parents, mostly recount routine details of their daily lives — and, before long, reports of Jim’s efforts to find a new pulpit.
She also writes of packages she is sending to Tommy and Joe, her two brothers, both in the armed services.
September 30, 1942: “Here it is my twenty-ninth birthday — the last one of my twenties. I remember rather well when I first hit them because I was thrilled to have attained that ripe old age. And now I am almost at the thirty mark. Doesn’t seem that I am ready to be that old yet.”
November 1942: “Our church services are growing every Sunday. Our music has become so lovely that visitors come each Sunday to hear the choir the whole town is talking about. And Jim, being inspired by all these crowds and just naturally getting better and better all the time, is preaching such sermons that they are brought up and talked about at meetings of every sort. He preached once on Reasons for Not Going to Church, and you should have heard the comments.
“Tonight Jim and I will go to the high school to hear a lecture sponsored by the Rotary Club which is on the general subject of the settlement of postwar problems. The lectures have all been fine since they give us a chance to get different opinions and ideas about things we hear and read about. Since Christmas, we spent $1.50 on a three- month subscription to the Sunday New York Times. I surely do enjoy that paper, even when I have to read two weeks’ copies together like I am doing now. It takes time to read it and that is something I have very little of now.”
A March 1943 letter to her parents tells of visiting a church in Memphis (small and disappointing) that was considering calling Jim. She begins the letter by noting that they are about to celebrate their 6th anniversary. (They’ve already served in two churches.) “I’d rather stay here, because I think Jim is destined for something better and this isn’t it. Besides, we’ve just had a raise and I want to see how it feels to get $2400 for a while.”
Not long after: “Well, at last it has happened. If everything goes along as Jim believes it will, we shall be leaving Blytheville in about a month. For Texarkana — the Arkansas side. There seems to be large growth in that city now, the church has over 400 members, and they are thinking of paying $3300 salary. We will probably go as soon as we can after the 12th of March since I can’t be moving around much after that time. And here I’ve got not only moving ahead of me but also a change in doctors and worry about whether I can get into a strange hospital with so little advance notice, and the prospect of facing a new and strange congregation looking like a second cousin of an elephant!”
Late in April, my brother is born. According to family lore, his birth comes in an inferior hospital on the Texas side of town because Grace wants Texas on her son’s birth certificate. Her Texas roots are not the only thing Grace takes pride in. She tells her parents that, at the church’s welcoming reception, she overheard a Mrs. Booker saying, ‘Why she just doesn’t look like most people. She’s different looking. Like a movie star or somebody you don’t see around every day.’”
In a letter dated two days after D-Day, Grace writes of having missed the siren intended to alert people to the invasion of the Normandy beaches. “I didn’t know anything about it until I saw the big headlines in the paper. It is a terrible thing and hard to face when I think of all the boys going through hell. Being able to hear about events almost as soon as they happen is a wonderful thing but I find the radio stimulates and prolongs my upset feelings. I want to hear it and yet I want to turn it off.”
Meanwhile, a letter to a friend back in Blytheville describes the new church and manse, adding: “Can you see why I feel very happy? There are many difficulties, but where wouldn’t there be? I am glad we could move to such a pleasant place. I really hated to leave some of the people in B., but I know that it was best.….I could go on and on, I suppose. I like to visit with a typewriter. I guess it’s a good thing I have diapers to fold and mending to be done.”
A July 2, 1944, letter to her parents discusses what she hopes will be an upcoming reunion of all the McSpaddens: “Josephine wrote such a nice letter — written on her streamliner away up in the clouds (Grace’s sister is now a stewardess) and said she was planning to come home in September and hoped I would be able to come then, too. But I didn’t know whether Joe could come. I hope he does get to. I certainly shall come, if you have room for all of us, because I want so much to be all together again.”
Twenty days after that letter, Grace’s brother Joe is killed in action over Italy. He was 22.