Event in 1935.
Written April 1993.
The excitement was at fever pitch in the Dial clan the day after we came home from our river trip. It was David’s wedding day!
David was the family’s baby, a very special gentleman, and much loved by all. He was unspoiled, mild-mannered, gentle, and generous to a fault with his time and talent. He was always perceptive of the needs about him and was almost aggressive in his helpfulness. He also had a redeeming sense of humor.
He had just completed an extended internship in pathology, having graduated from Case Western Reserve Medical School. He had obtained his first paying position at New Hampshire State Hospital as a pathologist. He had a nice apartment at the hospital complex to live in and was ready for marriage.
David had met the beautiful Joyce Hart in Boston. She was a tall, lithe brownette with a faultless complexion and soft brown eyes. She was a sensitive, observing, artistic young lady who was quite religious. She was a novice in an order of Episcopal nuns when David lured her away.
Joyce was two years older than David and was very sensitive about it. She didn’t want that generally known, but she loved him ardently until the end of her life, and he loved her also.
Joyce had lived in Denver with her widowed mother before she went to New England to study and work. The only other relative she had out West was a pregnant sister.
“True love never runs straight,” and even in the beginning there was the problem of “where shall the wedding be”? Joyce pointed out that the wedding customarily took place at the bride’s home. She also wanted to keep the guest list small.
The Dials were numerous in Cleveland. There was David’s mother, his three brothers and sister, their families, his cousins, aunts, and an uncle. They all would, of course, “have” to attend David’s nuptials.
Joyce’s mother was in poor health and couldn’t come East for the affair. Neither could her pregnant sister, so they could not have the event in Denver. Boston was out because the whole Dial clan could not be transported that far. They may have learned a lesson in their trip to New Haven!
Joyce reluctantly agreed to the suggested solution as it seemed to be the best one. That solution was to accept Mother Dial’s kind invitation to be married in her Cleveland apartment.
Joyce arrived two days before the date set. As Mother Dial’s guest, she hoped to become acquainted with her and have a leisurely time getting ready.
What were her first impressions? Were they shockingly different from the pictures she had previously visualized? Mother Dial was so graciously hospitable and warm-hearted that she never repelled anybody. Her lifestyle was very simple. Was it too stark for Joyce? Was the family overpowering, too intensely tuned to the practice of medicine?
The day before the wedding Elizabeth came with her three small children to give Joyce an extended tour of the city. Elizabeth felt very protective toward her brother and was perhaps checking out the situation.
The tour covered mainly the busy throbbing industrial heart of the city, the Flats, which was not the upscale area it is today. Their route traversed the smoky, dirty, surrounding slums and missed Cleveland’s beautiful residential sections.
Could this have been obnoxious to her artistic soul? Did the children annoy her and tire her with their prattle and bickering? We will never know what she was really thinking that night. Excitement ran high in everyone. Tomorrow was David’s wedding day!
D-day was here at last! Mother Dial had made all the arrangements herself. The ceremony was set for 11:00 A.M. in her flower-decorated living room. Her Congregational minister was present, as were all the members of her family, plus five small grandchildren — all under age six. A few important aunts, uncles, and cousins were also there.
We had dressed in our very best, and the children were better dressed than ever before. The three little girls wore ruffled taffeta pastel dresses, and the two little boys sported their first tailored long pants suits. So beautiful were they all that it affected their behavior. They behaved perfectly! None of them had ever been to a wedding before, so they were eager to learn “What is a wedding”?
We were all seated quietly, looking toward the bedroom area. We expected the bride and groom to emerge momentarily, but Mother Dial came out looking as if she might have been crying. She announced, “I am sorry, but there isn’t going to be a wedding here this morning. Last night Joyce ran away to Boston, and David went after her.
I have arranged for a wedding breakfast to be served at noon in Lakewood at the Lake Shore Hotel. We will now proceed there.” The Lake Shore was then the most elegant place to entertain on the whole West Side of town.
We were all stunned, but we were happy to obey her in her distress. The doorman greeted us and ushered us to the dining room, where the maitre d’hôtel welcomed us.
He looked us over curiously, obviously searching for the bride and groom so he could seat them in their place of honor. Robert and I were so refreshed and sparkling from our restful vacation on the rivers that he latched on to us and seated us there. This much amused the rest of the family, who knew we were the oldest married couple in the clan. Our two children, seated happily with their cousins, left us conveniently childless for the hour. Only the children obliviously thought they had been to a wedding.
We all made as merry as we could while feeling so sorry for Mother Dial and wondering how and why this all happened. Days later, she wrote Robert and me a note of appreciation for saving the day by being such a happy “bride and groom.”
Now there was a wedding; only we were all missing. David caught Joyce somewhere in the East where a Justice of the Peace married them. Shortly thereafter, they married again in an Episcopalian chapel in the presence of her friends, the nuns, with whom she had been in training.
David and Joyce lived happily ever after for only seven short years in their little haven in the hospital complex. It ended one evening when Joyce went to his office to go to dinner with him and found him slumped over his desk, dead.
He had a rare blood disease related to low blood sugar — but not the diabetes other family members endured in their later lives.
Through the years, Joyce grew closer and dearer to us in her widowhood. She was so good to my children, caring for them when I was ill and taking them on trips to Denver and Boston. My traveling children called on her every time they went through Denver, taking her out to eat and for a ride in the mountains. They loved her, and she appreciated what they did for her. She always reminisced so lovingly with them about David.
We tried as diplomatically as we could over the years to find out just why she ran away on the eve of her wedding day, but she would never tell. She died in a nursing home in Denver only last month (January 1993). The answer to our wondering will always be “blowing in the wind.”
Mary W. Dial
Transcribed May 1993 by CED
Posted Dec 14, 1993 at 03:30.
Revised Jan 23, 2023 at 19:44. EDT.
Retrieved Jun 1, 2026 at 22:08.
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