Full Text of the Excerpt

We were quite active in the Baptist Church, which is where I met my husband. He expected to become a Baptist minister until he went to Baylor University and began to realize what was involved in being a minister in the Southern Convention and decided that his outlook was already too broad to permit him to have a successful career in the Southern Convention. So, he took a long summer off, went to West Texas and thought about it and decided that the thing he needed to do was to become a lawyer instead. We were already engaged and when he came back after that long exile, he said, "I'm going to become a lawyer," and I had to decide whether I wanted to marry a minister or marry him. It didn't take me long to decide that I wanted to marry him, although that wasn't easy because it didn't occur to us then that people got married before they were ready to support themselves and sustain a home. That meant that he had another long period of professional education ahead of him. After thinking it over for a few days, I said, "Yes, I think that it is all right. I would still like to marry you if you still want me. I wouldn't mind so much being married to a lawyer as long as you don't go into politics." [Laughter] Then, he did go into politics. [Laughter] With my enthusiastic support and after awhile, he became discouraged and I never have.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

When were you married?

MARGARET CARTER:

In 1934.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

And you were living in Ft. Worth at the time?

MARGARET CARTER:

Yes.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

And had he earned his law degree by then?

MARGARET CARTER:

Oh yes, he wasn't about to marry me until he had his Texas law degree.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

So you had a long courtship?

MARGARET CARTER:

Oh, yes we did.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

This was often the case.

MARGARET CARTER:

And then we waited a long time to start our family after that.