-Photo by Steve Hill
-Photo by Lamar Wright
By Gary Leftwich
Staff Writer, The (Newnan, Georgia) Times-Herald
It was a warm Saturday evening in August when Ruth and Eugene Jackson exchanged wedding vows at a friend's home in Newnan.
He was 19 and she was three years younger when they pledged their love to one another, surrounded by a small group of family and friends.
Two weeks ago, on Aug. 17 - another warm August Saturday evening in Newnan - the Jacksons marked their 50th anniversary. This time they were joined by a crowd of some 250 friends and relatives.
While there have been good and bad times, the secret to making a relationship last half a century is not that big a mystery, according to Mrs. Jackson.
"You expect to have some hard times and you have to keep it going," she said. "I never thought about it not working. You give in sometimes and keep in mind what each others' good points are, as well as the bad ones."
It was 1943, and Ruth Jackson was a freshman when she met Eugene at Newnan High School.
"I was 13 and he was 16," she remembered. "We didn't date. We just met in class."
As World War II escalated and the draft neared, Eugene Jackson joined the Navy, not wanting to take his chances on being ordered to join another branch of service. He returned home to Newnan in 1946.
"He came home on my 16th birthday," Mrs. Jackson said, recalling their reunion. "He met me at school. He just surprised me. I didn't even know he was in town."
Months later, the couple was married at a friend's home on Greenville Street and spent four days on a honeymoon in Chattanooga.
"We had a second-hand car," Mrs. Jackson said. "He bought it just out of the Navy."
Returning home, the couple moved into an old tool shed given to them by Jackson's father, along with a plot of land. Soon after, Jackson added a kitchen, and later another room and then another as the house, and the family, began to grow.
First there was a daughter, Diane, born in 1948. Twin girls, Cathy and Carol, followed three years later; and Connie was born after another three years. The couple's only son, Alan, arrived in 1958.
"We were perfectly happy," Mrs. Jackson recalled. "We didn't have very much. Back then, you didn't expect as much as people do today."
Now grown up, Connie Davis, Carol Frank and Cathy Wright all are educators in Newnan. Diane Dawson is a former Coweta County Commissioner.
And Alan, well, he's one of the top performers in country music.
During the Jacksons' 50th anniversary celebration, held at the White Oak Athletic Center, all five children reminisced about their childhood together as they paid tribute to their parents.
Honesty, integrity, fairness and unselfishness were values taught in the Jackson home, according to Dawson. She spoke of Sunday dinners with the family and of how her parents were always there to help when any of their children needed a hand.
"My parents never lectured or tried to make choices about what our lives should become. They never compared us," she said. "We are different and special to them - each of us were encouraged to make whatever we wanted of our lives. They knew when to let go - when we should fly. And they let us."
Life around their home was like a scene from "Leave It to Beaver" or "Father Knows Best," according to Wright. Skiing and camping trips helped create a closeknit family.
"It's the camaraderie that's important - catching up on each others' lives, making each other laugh, putting things into perspective," she said.
"Thanks for the high expectations, the pride and the dignity you instilled in each of us," Wright said. "I'm not sure what you did to make us all so fiercely independent - too proud to lean on each other, or to ask anyone for help, but that's a quality we share and maybe one we could use a little less of."
Both Frank and Davis offered tributes to their parents through poems.
"You made each mealtime special, as we all slipped into place. We began and ended days together and took turns reciting grace," Frank wrote in Lessons in Love. "You never made a show of faith, but we knew that it was there. You lived it clearly every day and spent sleepless nights in prayer."
"You've taught us all the lessons, though we may not mind them all," Frank wrote. "We can pay no better tribute than to try to be like y'all."
In a poem entitled, I Learned it All By Watching You, Davis wrote, "I learned how the importance of doing my best, being myself and not like the rest. I learned that often you have to be last and I learned how to love, how to sing, how to laugh."
"I learned making money should not be life's goal, but the bond of a family is what's precious to hold."
Alan Jackson paid tribute to his parents through word and song, and brought his band along.
"They always spanked my sisters for things that happened to me - even if they didn't do it," he said jokingly. "I always liked that part."
Jackson also recalled his parents' encouragement when he decided to make a move to Nashville, chasing his dreams of music.
"A lot of parents probably would have discouraged their son, especially since I didn't have a lot of experience," he said. "But they never did. They always wished me luck and encouraged me to do what I wanted to do."
Jackson sang two of his hit songs - Home and Livin' on Love - which he wrote for his parents, and I'd Love You All Over Again. Jackson's band also performed Down Yonder, an instrumental favorite of his father's.
The lyrics of Home ring true, according to Mrs. Jackson. It tells of the tool shed they turned into their home.
"It's home. We made this house a home," she said of the original house, which they still call home today. "When you stay somewhere as long as we've stayed here, nowhere else is home."
A replica of the house and the original tool shed rested on top of a cake made for the anniversary celebration.
With 50 years of marriage behind her, Mrs. Jackson said that she continues to look forward to each new day with Eugene.
"We're going to make it," she said of the next half-century. "We started the next day on our next 50 years."
-Photos by Steve Hill
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