Kendrick Brice

Article from the Dallas Morning News on 24 Dec 1981 by Debra Martine

The way K.C. and Verla Brice look at it, the key to staying married is to overlook a lot.  Don't bother arguing with your mate over small things - they really aren't worth the time.  And never even think of trading in your mate for a younger, more streamlined model - chances are the newcomer will be worse than the one you're leaving behind.

To stay married, says K.C. one first must hold out for the "right" mate.  Seek out the best of the best.  And long courtships - the kind in which "you can really get to know one another" - should be included, too.

If you have done all this (overlooking the mate's faults all the way), Brice says you can stay married for, say, 70 years.

This Christmas Eve, while households the world over celebrate the traditional holiday, K.C. and his wife, Verla, will have one extra reason to celebrate; they'll be observing their 70th anniversary.  And if someone just happened to ask them, they'd say they're ready for 70 more.

"He'd do anything in the world for me, " says Verla 88, with a smile.

"That's right," say K.C., 92.  "I wouldn't even bat an eye."

This year's anniversary will be like so many others: a quiet dinner at home.  On Christmas Day, they will participate in a hugh dinner at the Irving home of one of their five children, exchange anniversary and Christmas gifts, and be surrounded by some of their 18 grandchildren and 28 great-grandchildren.

Then they will go back to their white frame home, in East Dallas, where they've lived for 40 years.  Christmas will be a day to rest and talk on the phone to family and friends.

"Why have we stayed together so long?" sats K.C. dressed in his usual attire, a business suit. "Well, I guess it's because she couldn't get away from me, and I couldn't get away from her.  We just looked over the mistakes."

He was born Kendrick Brice in 1889 in Corinth, Miss.  His father was a farmer, and when K.C. was 5 years old, the family moved to Tira, Texas, a small town 15 miles north of Sulphur Springs.

She was born Verla Spencer in 1893 in Addren, Texas- an even smaller town 5 miles from Tira.  Like her husband she comes from a farming family.

"You know, out in the country, the only way you meet people is a church revivals, at big dinners....," days K.C.  "That was about the only amusements you had."

One day, when K.C. was 20, his mother went to Addren to see the school pageant.  "And she came back and said to me, 'I saw the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life,'" says K.C. "Naturally, it attracted my attention because my mother had good taste".

K.C. hurried to the school and went backstage.  He didn't know what the girl was supposed to look like - just that she was pretty.  While backstage, he ran into a lovely 16 year old girl who was about to perform in a routine with a barrel hoop.

"She had broken her hoop and I fixed it for her," K.C. says. "They I asked her for a date.  She had never been on a date.  She told me to come back to her house next Sunday for dinner.  then she gave me a fan that wouldn't cool a fly.  That's when I realized she was the girl my mother told me about.  I went to her house that Sunday and I've been eating Sunday dinner with her ever since!"

The couple dated for a year. "Our dates were on Sunday mostly, " says Verla matter-of -factly. "See, in the county, you don't have things to do every day and night.  We didn't go out during the week."

They never even considered dating anyone else. "Never did care about seeing other boys," Verlas says. "I liked him just fine."

A year later K.C. asked her to marry him during a ride in his horse-drawn buggy. "I said, 'I'm going to marry you and I hope you don't object,'"  K.C. says. "And she didn't."

But in those days, a simple yes from the intended wasn't good enough:  There still was the matter of asking Verla's parents for their daughter's hand.

"I just told them during dinner that I was going to marry Verla and I hoped it met their approval." he says. "I think her father tolerated me."

On Dec 24, 1911, K.C. and Verla were married in a horse-drawn buggy in an open field.  It was a double ceremony; one of Verla's girlfriends and her fiance were in another buggy beside then.

"The preacher just stood between us and said the vows," K.C. says. "See getting married around Christmas was just the thing to do back then.

They moved to Sulphur Springs six months after their wedding, and K.C. opened a vegetable store.  Ten years later, they moved to Greenville, Texs, and opened a new store.  Three years later, they moved to Gainesville, Texas.  "We stayed until other competition came in, then we moved on," K.C. says.

In 1927, they headed for Ardmore, Okla. "We were almost wiped out by the Depression," K.C. says. "That's when we came to Dallas."

Along the way, their family grew.  First was a daughter Merlee, now 69.  Then came a son Deryl, 61, the twins Burton and Barbara, 52, and finally Donald, 51.  After he got out of the vegetable business, K.C. worked for an insurance company, then got his old merchandising bug back and went to work for a household-goods company.  Eventually he opened his own mercantile company East Dallas, which he kept until his retirement at age 84.

Both Verla and K.C. are thankful they've survived old age without hospital care. "I don't know how we've gotten to live so long." says Verla.  "The other couple we got married with have died.  But I just feel that's the way it is.  We'll stay here as long as the good Lord wants us to."

We have little spats, but I never once thought about divorce," she says. "I didn't marry him to get a divorce.  I loved him, and I took my vows, and I feel it's my duty to stick by him.  That's all there is to it."

And K.C. says he never once doubted that he had found "the best".

"I couldn't have found a woman who made a better wife then she did if I looked all over the world.  If this isn't a romance, I don't call it a marriage."

****In August of 1982, K.C. (my grandfather) was diagnoised with Leukemia.  He would take treatments at Baylor Hospital Dallas.  I drove him to several of these.  He said he wanted to celebrate his 71st wedding anniversary and see the new year.  He did both, dying on the 1st of January 1983.  Grandmother lived to be 103, but died on ....can you guess......  the 1st of January 1997.  "If this isn't a romance, I don't call it a marriage."