Grandparents Elope

For years, everyone thought my Grandma and Grandpa Bieke were married on March 30, 1940, at St. Catherine's Church in Detroit. And they were! But what nobody knew was that they were also married on September 4, 1939, in Auburn, Indiana! The young lovers had run off and eloped 6 months before their church wedding!

So apparently my Grandma was getting old and getting her affairs in order, and my Grandpa had already been gone for almost 20 years. My Grandma called all her children in to a meeting and with all seriousness told them that her and my Grandpa had run off to Indiana one night and eloped. The way my Mom tells the story, my grandparents were still in high school (they were high school sweethearts), although the records I have show that he was 20 and she was 19 years old at the time of elopement. In any event, they were still living with their parents when they eloped. As the story goes, on the way home from Indiana they got scared about what their parents would think and decided not to tell anyone. So they went back and continued to live with their respective parents, then got married in the church in Detroit 6 months later.

My Grandma felt bad about this whole affair because it wasn't a church wedding and she wanted to set the records straight in case anyone found out later about the previously unknown marriage. That is why she called the meeting of her children.

It turns out my Grandma was born in Scotland and was Protestant. Apparently, being Protestant, my great-grandfather didn't like Catholics. So that is the major reason they got scared and didn't tell anyone about eloping, they didn't want to set off her Old Man by finding out afterward his daughter had married a Catholic. They did end up getting this straightened out with the Old Man and my Grandma converted to Catholicism.

One thing is for sure. You could sure see the love my Grandpa had for my Grandma right up until the time he died in 1978. He just had that look in his eye! So this story doesn't really surprise me!