JamesHoag.com

Karen found a write-up she did during or right after we got married and covers the two weeks or so from the time we left Michigan to go west to get married until we eventually ended up in New Orleans a newly married couple. I wanted this to be saved for posterity, so I’m including it in this blog. When I publish this as a continuous story, I’ll put it in chronological order with the rest of the narrative. It will take several days to write it all, so I hope you enjoy re-living once again our marriage and honeymoon. I turn the remainder of this blog over to Karen for the next several days:

September 19 – 30, 1966

Loaded down with all kinds of foodstuffs, we started out from 1303 Capital, N.E. Battle Creek, Michigan (Karen’s address before we married) at 6 a.m. on September 19 (Monday). Those riding in the red and black Rambler station wagon were Sister Kader, Martin, Tootie, Jim and me, alias Karen Rupp. Our destination was Salt Lake City by September 22 (Thursday) or bust!! Our purpose was the marriage of Jim Hoag and Karen Rupp in the Temple of Our Lord and also the sealing of Sister Kader to her late husband and her children. There were many miles between Battle Creek and Salt Lake City (1800 miles to be exact!) and as we were to find out, many obstacles to confront us.

This did not enter our minds as we were in too good of spirits even though our eyelids were a little heavy. The air was brisk and cool. We had the road to ourselves. Battle Creek would have to do without three Kaders, one Hoag and one Rupp for awhile. In fact, they would never see this Rupp again, not with that name anyway. We saw Indiana, Illinois and Iowa on Monday. They all had pretty flat ground with very few picturesque scenes to catch our eye. We sacked out in York, Nebraska for the night at the Y Motel. The local time at which we stopped was 7:30 p.m. 

Up bright and early Tuesday morning, we left York about 6:30 a.m. We drove through the rest of Nebraska that day but not without mishap. I drove from North Platte, Nebraska through an itsy bit of Colorado to Sunol, Nebraska where it was my privilege (?) to be noticed by a state police officer. He soaked us $20.00 for my speeding. Jim took over the wheel then! 

More tomorrow…

Dad

I tried one last thing before we left BYU. Along the way, I had heard of a new field called Biomedical Engineering. It was brand new and hardly any school was offering it. I had always wanted to be a doctor, but since I faint at the sight of blood, it didn’t seem like a good fit. But to use engineering in the medical field seemed like a match made in heaven. The University of Utah was one of just a couple schools in the country that had a graduate Biomedical Engineering program. So, I sent off my application for Master’s Degree work at the U of U. If I had been accepted, our lives would have been greatly different than they were. But, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I was not accepted.

That left IBM. So, we took the job in New Jersey and off we went. School was done and once again we were starting a new chapter in our lives. Coming to BYU, we were three. Now we were four. On my trip to New Jersey, I had found a little two-bedroom house that was for sale and we felt like we could afford. I called my mother and she agreed to loan us the down payment and so we moved into our first home in Hopatcong, New Jersey. Our new home was just a block or so from Hopatcong lake and we had private rights to use the little beach. It’s too bad we could never afford a boat or we might have really had some fun.

A footnote to the story about applying to U of U for graduate school: I was pretty bummed out when I didn’t get accepted. It took me a few months to really get over it. I don’t take rejection very well. It was a year or two later that I had some reason to communicate with the head of the Engineering Department at the University of Utah. I don’t remember why, but I wrote to him and asked him straight out why I had not been accepted. It was something that always bugged me and I wanted to know. He was very kind. He sent me back a nice letter. He said that the Biomedical course was very new and they were only accepting three new graduate students each year. He told me that the year I applied, they had received 36 applications and I had ranked number 6. Since they had only accepted 3, I missed the cut by 3. Well, I felt a lot better. Number 6 out of 36 is not too bad. And, I wonder where I’d be today if I had been accepted. Probably working as a professor for the University of Utah.

Dad