Monday, June 28, 2010

Love at long last: Texas High School sweethearts marry 68 years later

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It’s been more than 68 years since West High School sweethearts Carl King and Dorothy Stallings started dating.
After decades apart, they got married Saturday in Waco.
She was a teacher’s daughter, and he ran track, winning the 1942 state championship in the high jump and a scholarship to Texas A&M.
The couple corresponded when King joined the Navy and was shipped out to the Pacific during World War II. When King returned to Texas in 1946, he and Stallings dated for two more years.
But they broke it off. Stallings stayed in the Waco area, where she was a school teacher. King got married and moved to the Gulf Coast, taking a job at a chemical company.
And that could have easily been the end of the story. But it wasn’t.
“When he married, I had to just put it out of my mind,” Stallings said in a phone interview Friday.
They went on with their lives. King, who’s 85, and his wife, Peggy, had four daughters (he now has about 40 grandchildren and great-grandchildren).
Stallings, 84, dated, but never married.
“No one ever measured up to him,” she said. “I knew how much he cared for me.”
When King’s wife died in 2007, Stallings got in touch with King.
“I knew he was hurting and I wrote and told him if there was anything I could do I’d be glad to help, and sometimes it just helps to have someone to talk to,” she said.
King and Stallings started talking on the phone, and she would occasionally write letters.
In Houston for Christmas that year, Stallings said she asked if she could visit him in League City, where he was staying with one of his daughters, but he said he didn’t think it was a good idea.
On Easter in 2008, she asked again.
Stallings recalled telling King “ ‘there are some things I want to say, and I want to say them in person, not over the phone.’ ”
King agreed to the visit.
“We talked for four or five hours and didn’t even take time for lunch,” she said. “We started talking, and we said that there wasn’t a day that passed when we didn’t think of each other.”
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Two months later King visited Stallings in Waco.

The newlyweds, Dorothy Stallings and Carl King, kiss Friday after their marriage ceremony at First Baptist Church of Waco.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald“He’s been coming from time to time, and each time he’s stayed longer,” she said. “And then five weeks ago he proposed to me.”

Flash forward to Saturday afternoon. King and Stallings were at First Baptist Church of Waco getting ready to tie the knot. It would be the first wedding for both Stallings and King, who eloped his first time around.
Before the afternoon wedding the couple discussed details with Don Cannata, who was officiating.
Asked if they wanted to do a cake-cutting ceremony after, Stallings said, “No. We’re not young and foolish any more.”
On the length of the wedding itself, King answered, “Short and sweet.”
Cannata honored their wishes. In about 10 minutes rings were on fingers and the couple had been pronounced man and wife.
But there was one slight hiccup.
Cannata nearly forgot to instruct the couple to kiss.
When it became clear King and Stallings might leave the altar without locking lips, the audience was quick to remind the minister.
After nearly seven decades the couple was united, and the bride said she was happy with the timing.
“God works on his own time, and this was a good time for me,” Stallings said. “I’m an only child, but now I’m getting four daughters, three sons-in-law and 16 grandchildren.”

VIDEO: Tear Warning..This is Beautiful and You Might Cry

thanks JJ

VIDEO: AT-AT DAY AFTERNOON

Australia's Hottest Grandmother

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Men's magazine Zoo Weekly awarded the title to 65 year old Leila Benussi from Alexandra Hills after husband George answered the call to find the nation's sexiest grandmother.

He sent in some saucy shots of his wife in her 'smalls', which did the trick.

"My husband talked me into it. He said there weren't many women with a body like mine at my age," Leila said.

"I just hope all the 20-year-old boys at the gym don't recognize me in their mag."

Leila pumps iron four or five times a week, but only went into her first gym at 57 to help with arthritis.

The Hottest Nanna title came with a $5000 prize, some of which she will put towards a holiday.

And while hubby George supports his wife's burgeoning modelling career, this is about as far as he will go.

"He won't go to the gym with me. He just drops me off," Leila said.

Police taser 86-year-old, bed-bound Oklahoma woman

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Police Tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn't breathe, after her grandson called 911 seeking medical assistance, the woman and her grandson claim in Oklahoma City Federal Court. Though the grandson said, "Don't Taze my granny!" an El Reno police officer told another cop to "Taser her!" and wrote in his police report that he did so because the old woman "took a more aggressive posture in her bed," according to the complaint.

Lonnie Tinsley claims that he called 911 after he went to check on his grandmother, whom he found in her bed, "connected to a portable oxygen concentrator with a long hose." She is "in marginal health, [and] takes several prescribed medications daily," and "was unable to tell him exactly when she had taken her meds," so, Tinsley says, he called 911 "to ask for an emergency medical technician to come to her apartment to evaluate her."

In response, "as many as ten El Reno police" officers "pushed their way through the door," according to the complaint.

The grandma, Lona Varner, "told them to get out of her apartment."

The remarkable complaint continues: "Instead, the apparent leader of the police [defendant Thomas Duran] instructed another policeman to 'Taser her!' He stated in his report that the 86 year-old plaintiff 'took a more aggressive posture in her bed,' and that he was fearful for his safety and the safety of others.

"Lonnie Tinsley told them, 'Don't taze my Granny!' to which they responded that they would Taser him; instead, they pulled him out of her apartment, took him down to the floor, handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a police car.

"The police then proceeded to approach Ms. Varner in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she began to suffer oxygen deprivation.

"The police then fired a Taser at her and only one wire struck her, in the left arm; the police then fired a second Taser, striking her to the right and left of the midline of her upper chest and applied high voltage, causing burns to her chest, extreme pain and to pass out.

"The police then grabbed Ms. Varner by her forearms and jerked hands together, causing her soft flesh to tear and bleed on her bed; they then handcuffed her.

"The police freed Lonnie Tinsley from his incarceration in the back of the police car and permitted him to accompany the ambulance with his grandmother."

Tinsley says the cops capped it all off by having his grandmother "placed in the psychiatric ward at the direction of the El Reno police; she was held there for six days and released."

"As a result of the wrongful arrest and detention, the plaintiff Lona M. Varner suffered the unlawful restraint of her freedom, bodily injury, assault, battery, the trashing of her apartment, humiliation, loss of personal dignity, infliction of emotional distress and medical bills."

They seek punitive damages for constitutional violations, from the City of El Reno, Duran, Officers Frank Tinga and Joseph Sandberg, and 10 Officers Does.

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