My son, Alan, set up the invitation that was sent to around fifty people.  On the cover he used a picture I had drawn of the house as it looked we lived there.  Inside was the 1948 invitation with some pictures of the wedding.

On the day of the reception, we arrived early.  The newspaper and TV wanted some pictures in daylight.  Of the ten members of the wedding party, nine were still living and eight were able to attend.  We did not count the numbers but there must have been sixty to eighty people.  The big house with the open areas that allowed a comfortable flow of people handled the crowd extremely well.  The big cameras also took a lot of space.

Above is a thank you note Sharon let me copy that my niece, Peggy, sent them after the reception.

Due to the ice at the time of the reception, my sister-in-law, Virginia, and her daughter, Betty, were unable to come from Missouri. When the weather was better they came and Rob and Sharon opened their house to them.

A short time after the reception, House and Garden TV filmed the house and interviewed the Smiths and my family for their show If Walls Could Talk. Alan had filmed the reception and they used his footage in the film as well. I recall saying the reception was one of the best times of my life.

Above are the two writers for If Walls Could Talk on the porch after putting together their program for House and Garden Television.

It was amazing how things just fell together for the reception. The timing was right for the occasion; Sharon was wise to tell me not to wait too long. Ted Lincoln died that summer at 84. He had a great life full of many accomplishments, some of which have been presented here. Nita lived for four more years. What Rob and Sharon offered them was a true closing to their wonderful life together. In the summer of 2000 following Ted’s death, Beatriz Terrazas did a large follow up article in the Dallas Morning News on them .

My family and the Smiths will never forget the reception. The coverage it drew made it much more than an anniversary of a reception but a celebration of a lifetime.

I often think of those years after 1954 when the house was ravaged then left to disintegrate. Could I have ever imagined what was to come?
The following letter from my niece Betty again shows what so many of my family thought of the home on Tremont street:

Of the surviving family and friends that still remember the house, probably no one loves and remembers the house as well as Betty.

Her wonderful note above expresses what so many in our family felt for the house that was home to so many.

In the decade that has passed since the reception and news coverage, Munger Place has continued to grow with more restoration as well as the areas around its perimeter. All of East Dallas is slowly gaining back what was lost by the neglect by the city in the middle decades of the Twentieth Century.

Fortunately 5003 Tremont is in an historical district in a city with a poor history of preserving its past. This protection given Munger Place should safeguard its future for years to come.

We know the house was pretty well into its construction in May of 1910 from the picture in the Dallas News. The completion of the structure would have likely been in the summer of that year. The summer of two thousand and ten would be its centennial year and could be the suitable place to close this story but should the history of a house still standing have an ending? Does even a story of a home that may no longer exist cease to have future influence?

It is compelling to again turn to F. Scott Fitzgerald and his famous ‘dash’ for understanding. Fitzgerald’s novel, This Side of Paradise, on his own youth while attending Princeton, ends with the line, “I know myself,” he cried, “but that is all–” Many early editors, missing his point, removed the now famous dash and substituted the grammatically proper period. However many reviewers now see the dash as meaningful in indicating this was not the end; he was young and his knowledge would continue to grow. A cold period seems to leave no thought for the future. I love Fitzgerald’s dash; in an ever changing world, should it not often convey more meaning than a final ending.

In the mid seventies, when our helicopters lifted the last American soldier from the top of the American Embassy in Saigon, I sought a much admired, wise friend and colleague, Lucius Davis, to discuss the end of the Vietnam War. When I mentioned the tragic war’s end, he reminded me that Newton, when working on his theories, had to study the Roman poets to grasp the meaning of infinity. While this took a minute or so to sink in, I realized this was his way of telling me that nothing really ends but continues to evolve and there would be a future with Vietnam and our country.

In Meditations ix 19, Marcus Aurelius said, “Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change…so is the universe.”

My friend Travis Mayo’s many writings dwell on the evolution of nature, ideas and mankind. He also grew up in Munger Place and through many discussions due to his awareness and understanding we came to the following conclusion:

Though we no longer dwell in our old homes or within the boundaries of Munger Place, we still think of it as home.  Symbolically we see our community as a dash, not as a period, and as a continuation not as an ending–