FIREWORKS
RAY AND BETTY STONE, 1945.
The Carousel Waltz— RICHARD RODGERS, 1945
Ray Stone and Betty Boyle met for the first time on the Fourth of July, 1936—however, fireworks did not immediately ensue. Twelve-year-old Betty was taking a spin on the merry-go-round when Ray, 13, approached. “He said, ‘Can I ride with you, sister?’” Betty recalled. “I said, ‘I’m not your sister.’” And that was that.
The two grew up in towns just eight miles apart; Betty in Winchester, Idaho and Ray in Craigmont. “In small towns like that you just look around for the girls and find the one you like and go for it,” said Ray. So when he came across Betty again when he was a sophomore in high school, he asked her out. However, she lived with her aunt and uncle and they refused to let her date until she was 16. So Ray waited.
The two began dating shortly after Betty’s birthday. “Ray used to come over on Sundays and have dinner with us,” Betty said. “I got a free dinner that way,” Ray explained. But he did his part—he’d bring the meat for the meal after charging to his family’s account at the local grocery store.
Ray started drumming while in high school and soon had a regular gig. “I drummed with the band on Saturday nights and earned $8,” he recalled. “Then the next day I’d go out and spend it all on Betty.”
After graduation, Ray attended college in Lewiston, but the events of December 7, 1941 interrupted his education. “We were having Sunday dinner when we heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor,” Betty said. Ray immediately wanted to do his part. “I tried to join the RAF, but I couldn’t get across the border.”
Instead, he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, and sent to Texas for training. Betty, still a senior in high school, missed her sweetheart, but he faithfully wrote to her. One letter in particular stands out. Betty said, “Just before I graduated Ray wrote me a letter, asking me to come to Texas and marry him. I hid that letter in my Bible.”
Her mother opposed the marriage, so Betty enrolled at the University of Idaho. But Ray kept writing and Betty continued to respond. As the war efforts intensified, Betty moved to Portland where she worked as a welder in the shipyards. There another proposal from Ray reached her. This time he also sent a ring in the mail, and this time, Betty accepted. She traveled by train to San Angelo, Texas. The train was packed with troops, so Betty spent most of the journey sitting on the floor of the restroom.
BETTY BOYLE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO, 1944.
RAY STONE, FT. BENNING, 1943. ON THE BACK OF THE PHOTO RAY WROTE, “FORCED SMILE. NOT HAPPY.”
On July 8, 1944, the couple exchanged vows in a small Presbyterian church. Ray had reserved a room at the Cactus Hotel. “My aunt and uncle gave us $25 for a wedding photo, but we spent it on the hotel and a steak dinner for the wedding party of four,” said Betty. She found a room to rent for $10 per month. “If my husband came for the weekend, the landlady charged an extra dollar.”
One month later, Ray was sent overseas.
He fought in three campaigns including the Battle of the Bulge. And always Betty was on his mind. In a V-Mail sent from Belgium during that battle, Ray wrote: “I think about you always Betty. The feeling and the love I have for you has grown into something much deeper than small talk & sayings.”
The vagaries of fate haunted him. “I’m feeling plenty lucky,” he wrote, “because some of my former friends weren’t so lucky.” The horrors of war became most apparent to the young paratrooper when he and his company liberated Camp Wobbelin in Nazi Germany. He and his fellow troopers found 1,000 dead—mostly Jews—and another 3,000 dying prisoners in the compound, a way station for men, women and children on their way to Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen.
Years later in a newspaper interview, he remembered that day as, “The most fearsome, depressing, traumatic experience of my life.” As Ray recalled that difficult time, he briefly gazed out of their living room window, with its stunning lake view. He shrugged, shook his head and said, “It was bad, but what the hell.”
RAY STONE, PARATROOPER, 1944.
V-MAIL TO BETTY, FROM BELGIUM, 1945.
It was bad alright. Betty said, “He had terrible nightmares. He’d wake up screaming. He’d seen his friends killed and he wondered why he was spared.” While her husband was fighting his way across Germany, Betty had returned to Winchester and began teaching school. “I was only 20,” she said. “But I was teaching band to some of the kids I had been in band with!”
Finally, in February 1946, after marching in the historic Victory parade in New York City, Ray returned home. He might have stayed in the military longer, but he said, “I was a troublemaker—I didn’t keep my mouth shut.”
They bought a new house for $1,200 and Ray went to work at the lumber mill.
However, he didn’t stay there long. Thanks to the GI Bill, Ray was able to complete the education the war had interrupted. He earned a B.A. from Whitworth University in 1951, and a master’s in education the following year. Betty continued her education as well and received a degree in counseling from Whitworth. They both taught in Coeur d’Alene public schools, but soon Ray began a long career at North Idaho College. Eventually, he was appointed dean.
In 1957, Betty spotted a little boy with blond curly hair on the school playground. Something about the child captivated her. “He looked angelic,” she recalled. “But he wasn’t.” After talking with the child’s teacher she discovered that eight-year-old Daniel was a troubled little boy. He’d already lived in eight homes in the past year and was soon to be sent to an orphanage. Betty couldn’t have that. She and Ray adopted their only child and brought him home. Sadly, Daniel died in 2001.
Ray served eight years as a city councilman and later served two terms as mayor of Coeur d’Alene from 1985 to 1994. During his tenure, the neo-Nazi, Aryan Nations organization did its best to wreak havoc in North Idaho. “It was a scary time. They’d harass by phone,” Betty said. “They’d call us and play that song, ‘You’re no good, you’re no good, baby you’re no good.” She wearied of the nightly interruptions. “I wanted to get an unlisted number but Ray said ‘no.’”
“I wasn’t afraid of them,” he said. His fearlessness and staunch defense of human rights didn’t go unnoticed. In 1987, Stone and others accepted the Raoul Wallenberg Award, presented to the city for its human rights work.
That wasn’t the only honor he received. In 1988, council members of the new U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., summoned Stone to the nation’s capital to award him the Eisenhower Liberation Medal for his part in the liberation of Wobbelin and because of Coeur d’Alene’s stand for human rights. Meanwhile at home, he didn’t quite get the hang of keeping the peace. Betty didn’t mind that a bit. She, better than anyone, understood that buried beneath that crusty demeanor laid a tender heart.
She acknowledged the couple has often clashed over the years. “I have very different philosophies of life,” Betty said.
“She’s more politically conservative,” added her husband.
His musical career picked up steam in his retirement years. He drums for the Ray Stone Swing Band and the group is always in demand. While Betty enjoys music, their hobbies haven’t always meshed. Ray mentioned he enjoys golf, which prompted Betty to laugh and say, “I was a very good golf widow.” She did attempt to learn the game and took a few lessons, but Ray wasn’t impressed with her grip and told her so. She didn’t appreciate his comments.
“She said, ‘I’m going home,’” Ray recalled. “I said, “You can’t! We’ve still got a lot of balls in the bucket.’”
“Watch me,” she replied and walked home.
Betty raised her eyebrows and smiled. “We quarrel a lot.”
Her husband agreed. “She’s bossy,” he said.
“I’m always telling him how to improve himself,” explained Betty. “I try to tell him to be nice and sometimes, he will.” But Ray Stone has always spoken his mind. However feisty their disagreements, Ray said what matters most is this: “In the final analysis we love each other. She’s been the best person I could have chosen for my kind of lifestyle. Everything I’ve wanted to do in life, Betty has supported.”
And in the summer when the Stones celebrate their next anniversary they plan to take a spin on a carrousel. Betty said, “This time I’ll let him ride with me.”
“The secret to a good marriage is acceptance. I accept her how she is, not what I’d like her to be.”—Ray Stone
RAY AND BETTY STONE, 2010. Photo courtesy Ralph Bartholdt
Ray Stone died June 17, 2013