Celebrating 70 years with Billy and Peggy Prater

Peggy Shackleford and Billy Prater met as 5-year-old first graders at Dora School back in 1937.

Although they couldn't have imagined it then, come Saturday these two sweethearts will be celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary with a party hosted by their children at the Dora Senior Citizens Center.

The 2-4 p.m. shindig is sure to attract plenty of former students (including me), because between them, they racked up an even half-century of classroom years at Dora.

In case a disclaimer is in order, let me get it out of the way right now.

I am unabashedly biased. I have loved Billy and Peggy Prater for almost my whole life, starting when I was a first-grader myself in Peggy's first year as a first-grade teacher at Dora in 1967.

Four years later, Billy was my fifth-grade teacher.

There are no two ways about it. When it comes to the Praters, I'm simply smitten.

Peggy said she thinks it is possible that she and Billy might have known each other before they actually came to school that first day, but she's not sure.

She is sure of this: "Dora was fixing to lose its primary program that year for lack of kids," she said. School officials went door to door in the district in search of potential students.

At 5, Peggy and Billy were a year younger than the typical first-grader (remember that this was before kindergarten had arrived in our world) but both of their families gave permission and enrolled them in Miss Freeda Willson's first grade.

The two were classmates for their primary years, but when the United States became involved in World War II, Peggy's blacksmith father, Jack Shackleford, was summoned to the shipyards in Washington state, with his family in tow.

The Shacklefords returned to eastern New Mexico after the war, and Peggy came back to Dora School at the start of junior year.

Billy remembers seeing "that pretty girl" when buses arrived that fall, and their childhood friendship soon resumed.

Peggy had helped set her friend Billy up with a few dates and at some point, another party was on the horizon.

"I was trying to get him a date and he said, 'What about you? What's wrong with you?,'" Peggy recalled. "I said, 'Nothing!'"

And so it began.

The 14-member Dora class of 1949 celebrated graduation with a senior trip to Denver, traveling "in the back end of a grain truck with a tarp thrown over it," Billy said. They both remember it as a wonderful adventure.

Peggy's beloved father, Jack, was killed in an automobile accident not long after the graduates returned, a memory that still brings tears to her eyes.

Billy had already picked out a $100 ring set in the "Monkey Ward catalog" and taken a job driving a tractor for 50 cents an hour to save up the money.

"When it came in," Billy said, "she didn't have a phone, so I went over to her house and we went for a drive. I said, 'I've got something for you. This is yours if you'll take it.'"

She did.

The two planned a Valentine's Day wedding - in honor of Peggy's father's birthday - but quickly ran into an obstacle.

"In New Mexico, a boy couldn't get married until he was 18," Billy said. Even with parental permission - which he had - it was no dice.

They crossed the state line to Texas where age was not a problem ... but a blood test and three-day waiting period were.

"We told them we wanted to get married on Valentine's Day and the clerk said she could waive two days but not three," Billy said.

The next day - Feb. 15, 1950 - those 17-year-old lovebirds and "three or four carloads" of their friends and family members cashed in on the two-day waiver and caravanned to Farwell for the wedding.

Billy's pastor from the Dora Baptist Church met them there, administering vows that seem to have stood the test of time.

"We never imagined this," Billy said with a chuckle. "We didn't even know we'd live this long."

He'll be 88 next week; Peggy blows out her 88 candles in May.

"I was in school at Dora for 12 years, taught there for 24 years, and was on the school board for nine years," Billy said. "That was my school."

Peggy spent 26 years as the first-grade teacher there ("I loved every minute of it," she says) introducing hundreds of us to Dick and Jane and Sally and Spot and Puff, and showering us, one and all, with unconditional love.

We former fifth graders will never forget Billy Prater reading aloud all of Laura Ingalls Wilders' "Little House on the Prairie" books as he guided us through the year with a kind heart and only occasional corrections from Old Betsy, his legendary wooden paddle.

(For the record, I avoided personal encounters with Old Betsy.)

I asked the Praters the secret to staying married for 70 years.

"I don't remember us fussing," Peggy said. "We've always been able to discuss what was bothering us. Even to this day, we discuss with each other what we are going to do."

Billy doesn't hesitate as he looks across the table at the woman he's known since they were 5.

"I love that kid over there," he said. "That's about it. We were told many times that it wouldn't work. We decided to just show 'em."

Betty Williamson wouldn't trade her first- and fifth-grade teachers for anyone. Reach her at:

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