ASHLEY TERRY
They say when you meet “the one,” you’ll know. For Harold Ray Wright, that moment came as soon as he saw a freshman walking up the gym steps at Azle Junior High — then Azle High School — even if she happened to be holding someone else’s hand at the time.
Despite the obvious signal that the young woman was taken, Wright simply couldn’t let this one get away, posing a bold question to the gentleman, “What are you doing holding my girlfriend’s hand?”
What started as an awkward encounter — one that today might have ended in a testosterone-filled scuffle — has now grown into a 70-year marriage filled with laughter, love and more handholding than Wright himself can count.
A LOVE FOR THE BOOKS
On Sunday, March 1, Wright and his best friend, Dot, will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary in Weatherford to honor their love story that first began more than seven decades ago.
Carolyn Schlueter, the lovebirds’ daughter and retired Azle High School teacher, said her parents are true AHS sweethearts.
“I know the whole story. My daddy was a senior, and my mother was a freshman,” Schlueter began before describing the bold girlfriend story. “Sometime after that, my mom approached my dad’s best friend in the gym, Kenton Harvey … She said, ‘I kind of think that Harold Ray Wright’s cute, but don’t tell him I said that.’ Of course, he told him.”
One comment from an overzealous friend later and the rest, as they say, was history.
“They started dating. My mom was a freshman, so she was 14, but when she was 15, my grandparents, her parents, were moving to Utah and she knew that she’d never see my dad again,” Schlueter said. “She was persistent and my grandparents gave in. My granddad said that he would let her marry my dad if she finished school.”
The pair didn’t waste any time and were wed when Dot was 15 and Harold was 20 — but not before they played a fun prank on Harold’s friends.
“For the Azleites, the wedding story goes that Daddy’s buddies congregated at Joe Rider Butane with the idea they would chivalry my Daddy on his wedding day. They would take you somewhere so you couldn’t get married. It was a joke,” Schlueter said. “He didn’t want to mess up his day because his parents were coming, so he gave the gang a later wedding time, married earlier in the day and he honked at the buds from Jacksboro Highway as he and his bride made their way to Waco for the honeymoon.”
To make their wedding day even more special, the couple chose to bind their love on March 2 — the same day as Harold’s birthday.
“Harold Ray has always said that Dot was his birthday gift,” Schlueter said. “For 70 years, that gift has been love, devotion and a life beautifully shared.”
‘DAIRY’ GOOD TIMES
Once Harold and Dot tied the knot, the pair moved to the family dairy farm, where they started milking cows for Harold’s father.
“They had a little house — they called it The Weaning House — and anyone who was milking for my granddad got to live in The Weaning House,” Schlueter said. “My parents lived there in that house and me and my two younger brothers were raised in that house for a long time.”
Over the years, Schlueter said her parents were dedicated to dairy life, working 12-hour days — oftentimes longer — milking cows, driving the milk truck and farming. In fact, Schlueter said her husband, Tom, didn’t even realize how hard her parents worked until he volunteered to work with Harold one day.
“He said, ‘I’m going to help your dad. We’re going to be working about half a day.’ I got home that night and Tom had gotten home. He said, ‘Your dad told me half a day. I’ve been there all day!’ I said, ‘Tom, to my daddy, half a day is 12 hours. To you, half a day is four hours,’” Schlueter said. “They worked all the time, and if my dad was farming and doing something, my mother would go ahead and start milking cows until he got finished in the field. She'd help him haul hay, she'd take him water, she'd take his lunch to the field. I mean, you know, they just took care of each other.”
Schlueter said her parents were known as “dairy experts,” as they knew — and still know — everything there is to know about farming.
“My dad got an ag degree, and my mom knows when a cow is getting impregnated,” she said. “She knows how many months to the day that calf is going to be born. They can tell by looking if something’s going on with the cow.”
While Schlueter said her children jokingly describe their grandparents’ cows as their pets, she said it’s hard for her to disagree since her parents do truly spoil them like no other.
“They have the fattest cows around,” Schlueter said. “My husband puts out hay for them, but my mother goes down every morning with a little bale of alfalfa hay and feeds the one that she doesn’t think gets enough to eat. They’re just caring, good people.”
Even today, Schlueter said her parents are still tending to their cattle — but now they have a few extra hands on the regular.
“When I retired from teaching at Azle High School, I didn’t want to be a farmer,” Schlueter said. “But my husband and I helped them a lot … Now, they have 11 cows. They used to have like 20 to 30 head and what they do is when they calve, they keep the calves for about a year and then they sell the calves for money, plus they have the ag exemption.”
Despite being a “true farm family,” Schlueter said growing up, she never realized that her family didn’t have any money, as her parents always provided her and her siblings with everything they needed.
“All we did was work,” Schlueter said. “Usually, if I really wanted something bad, that was my Christmas gift, and it’s just funny how you don’t realize … but our house was full of love.”
STRICT BUT STEADY
Growing up, Schlueter said her parents were strict, yet steady, and always had her and her siblings’ best interests at heart.
“We were expected to make As in school. If we made a B, we got in trouble,” she said. “But then, when we got old enough to drive, I’d say, ‘This is where I’m going. This is what I’m doing,’ and they’d say, ‘Be home at midnight.’ If you weren’t home at midnight, you were milking cows the next morning at 5:30 a.m., so there was a lot of incentive to get home on time.”
While her parents did have a few strict rules, Schlueter said they were not helicopter parents and trusted their children to make good decisions — as long as they came home by curfew.
“I feel like that’s been a bad thing for a lot of kids. They’re not allowed to grow up,” Schlueter said. “I mean, sometimes I’d say, ‘OK, I’m going here or there,’ but then my plans got changed. They never asked me because I got home in one piece and I got home at midnight.”
Schlueter said her dad even taught her how to change the oil, change a tire, install shocks, install the battery and check the oil in her 1965 Mustang.
“I knew how to do all of that,” she said. “He made sure because he wanted me to be safe.”
HOMETOWN TIES
One favorite tradition growing up, Schlueter said, was when her family would attend the high school football games and then stop for a bite to eat at Red Top Café on Main Street.
“Azle was close-knit,” she said. “I don’t know about now, but there was a time when my parents knew everyone in Azle and something about them, like their parents.”
Schlueter said her mom even wanted to put their anniversary announcement in The Azle News — until she realized times have since changed.
“She said, ‘Well, once the Wrinkles see it and so-and-so see it …’ She named all these people and I said, ‘But mother, they’ve all passed away,’” she said.
While Schlueter said lately it has been hard on her parents to know many of their best friends are no longer with us, they still cherish their memories with the Azle community. In fact, Harold is still involved with the Azle Alumni Association and is the oldest surviving member of the Azle FFA alumni.
“All the time when I was growing up, he was very close to his ag teacher at Azle High School until he retired, and then the new ones who came in had my brothers in ag,” Schlueter said. “All through my lifetime, Daddy would let the ag kids come to the house to dehorn cattle and do all the things that had to be done, like branding. He stayed very involved with that.”
BUILT TO LAST
With Dot’s big heart and Harold’s calm demeanor, Schlueter said she’s not surprised her parents have made it this long, describing their love as “unending,” “strong” and “deep.”
“I’m sure they had disagreements along the way, but personally I don’t remember any,” she said. “They’re very practical, down-to-earth people. They’ll call a spade a spade in a minute.”
In a note to the love of her life, Dot even detailed her time with Harold and credited it all to the man upstairs, who had a hand in their love story.
“God had a plan,” Dot’s note reads. “When we met in the hallway at the old Azle High School 72 years ago, I loved you then and I love you today. What makes a good marriage? Forgive and forget. Never go to bed mad … He has been my rock from the day I said, ‘I do.’ Work together, stay together. Remember, you are never promised tomorrow.”
When asked what her parents’ secret is to a long and happy marriage, Schlueter said it all boils down to one simple word: commitment.
“I think that when people married then, they married and took their vows to heart. I think they made a commitment and they worked on it,” she said. “I don’t know if people know what true love is anymore. I think a lot of people in today’s world maybe can’t stay married because they haven’t been around people and they don’t have that much interaction. We always have a screen in our hand, and I think that takes away from being able to process what’s going on with somebody else.”
While Harold and Dot may not have the same hobbies as they used to — like blowing up the dance floor at the old Cattle Baron restaurant — they still make sure to spend time together watching “Wheel of Fortune,” “The Bachelorette” and The Dallas Cowboys.
“I mean, their world is all about each other,” she said. “I think that it (their 70th anniversary) is just a monumental thing and that anybody can do it based on all the hardships they went through.”
As her family prepares to celebrate both her parents’ 70th anniversary and Harold Ray’s 90th birthday next month, Schlueter can’t help but appreciate just how lucky she is to have witnessed such a monumental marriage — and a love that truly became a lifetime.
“The people that know my parents, they know how special they are and how special their stories are,” she said. “They’re just tough pioneer people and I feel really blessed to have them at all in my life.”
