Ernie Richards'
family was very traditional, Jack recalls.
"They always had Santa Claus and the whole clan for Christmas.
Every summer they had a reunion, and there was enough of them
for two baseball teams." One particular aunt and uncle, Helen and Jim, had a cottage
on Lake Michigan, and Jack's family often went there to fish and swim.
In high school, Jack worked part-time at the
Lakewood Theater, where he was an usher and, in the afternoons, worked
the ticket box. "That's
where I did my homework," he laughed.
A movie then cost 25 cents for the balcony, 35 cents for the
main floor, and 10 cents for children, he recalled.
In 1937, with Jack just out of high school,
he was working at the Cinderella Theater when it was sold.
All the male employees, except the manager, the assistant manager
and the director, were fired, and female employees were hired in their
places. The director, one
of the three male employees still there, was Jack's best friend.
He gave Jack a pass to the theater "to look over the crop"
of girls. "I was sitting in the balcony above the tunnel, and I
saw a little blonde down there.
I had a candy wrapper, and I just threw the wrapper over the
railing. She picked it
up and gave me a dirty look. I
had another candy bar, and I stood there and swung that candy bar.
I dropped the candy bar, and then she smiled a little bit.
When she went out on her break, I slipped out and got a date."
The little blonde Jack had his eye on was Evelyn Ruby Jackson. They dated a year before getting married.
Evelyn was born June 13, 1920, in Graves County,
Kentucky. Her parents divorced
when she was about seven, and she moved with her mother to Detroit.
She was a year younger than Jack and graduated from Eastern High
School. She was an usher
and also worked the candy counter in several theaters.
Evelyn was a beauty and modeled hairstyles
and shoes for stores. She wore size 4-1/2 shoes.
"I don't think she ever got paid for anything," Jack
said. "She just got
a free hairdo and could buy her shoes real cheap." On their
dates, Jack and Evelyn often went dancing to the Big Band sounds of
Benny Goodman, Wayne King and Sammy Kaye.
"We had one dance hall called the Vanity, which was mostly
for young people. They
had bouncers, no close dancing, no alcohol, and all soft drinks.
But then you could go to several places."
It cost 55 cents to get into the dance halls.
Jack
proposed to Evelyn on Easter Sunday, 1938.
"I had gone over to her house, and her mother had a big
rooming house and I spent the night.
The next morning, we got up and she helped me paint my car.
We painted the car, and I proposed then."
Evelyn was 18; Jack, 19.
"She said yes right away but she reserved four nights,"
Jack laughs. "She
had made previous dates to go to a senior prom or something.
But she didn't keep them."
The couple was married Sept. 24, 1938, at Gratiot
Avenue Methodist Church in Detroit.
"I gave the preacher ten dollars, and borrowed ten dollars
to go on my honeymoon," recalls Jack.
"We went to a downtown Detroit hotel.
A hotel and a movie were it, although one of our friends put
an article in the paper saying that we went to Bermuda.
(We never made it.)"
Jack's best man was his friend Adam Bone.
Evelyn's maid of honor was Lucille Breehan.
The other two attendants were Jack's cousins, Ralph and Jean
Walker. "We had some
relatives who worked at Eastman Kodak, and they brought some of the
first color film ever made and took movies of us," Jack said.
