Goldwater
( Continued from page 5)
" miiaiir" n vti 1
': T:",? SSfr yyt )
know where I was. In 1941 I was in the Air Corps, and
she was without me. Politics on a city level, the Korean
War, then politics in full blast meant that we have been
apart a great deal." He pointed to a map that showed
where he has made speeches in the last 10 years. "I've
made hundreds of speeches and covered millions of miles.
When Peggy comes with me, she lives out of one suit
case. She leaves our beautiful home Be-Nun-Ki-In in'
Phoenix, to be with me. It's not easy for her."
Peggy Goldwater is now determined to mold herself
into a front-runner's wife. During her husband's eight
years as a Senator, she generally has confined herself to
a self-limited circle of friends and has eschewed most
Washington social functions. But lately she has been
attending some of them including Gwen Cafritz' spring
party, which is a major Washington social event.
Washington of today is a long way from the Phoenix
in which Peggy, a petite, blue-eyed girl of 20, first met
Barry, the imaginative young merchandiser. She thought
him extremely handsome and well-dre3sed. His pleated
shirt and rather severe necktie reminded her of the boys
she had known in the East, where she attended Washing
ton's fashionable Mt. Vernon Seminary. At the time she
was on a holiday and was unbearably homesick. Yet he
was the pursuer; she was in constant retreat during the
courtship that followed.
Barry made himself omnipresent in her life. He would
arrive in Muncie, seemingly out of nowhere. He
urged her to marry him, but she wouldn't say yes.
These were the years when Peggy was a student at the
Grand Central Arts School in New York and had the op
portunity to become a top designer at New York's famous
David Crystal Sports House. But because of the death
of her father, she returned to Muncie to be with her
mother. (Today, she expresses her artistic flair as a
painter in watercolors and oils. She also is studying with
Arizona artist William Schimmel.)
Peggy had many suitors, but she found herself turning
down other dates for Barry. "Peggy and I had a date on
New Year's Eve," he recalls. "She was in a telephone
booth, wishing her mother a Happy New Year. I went
into the booth, too. 'Peggy,' I said, 'I'm running out of
money and patience. Will you marry me? Is your answer
yes or no?' "
Though the answer was yes, the ardent suitor faced
the further hurdle of Peggy's going ahead with a world
cruise she and her mother had planned. "I was afraid,"
says the Senator, "that Peggy would fall for someone
else. I sent flowers to every port and letters to be read
at various times of the day from breakfast to nightcap."
Barry won his campaign, and they were married on
Sept. 22, 1934, in Muncie's Grace Episcopal Church.
Years later, in a letter to his daughter Joanne, Senator
Goldwater referred to the walk -a young couple takes
down a church aisle as "that soft road to the joy, tran
quillity, and understanding that love between two can
bring." He knows about that firsthand for that is the
kind of marriage he has had for 29 years.
The Senator urns on hand when daughter Peggy became
queen of the S'inth International Azalea Festival last year.
Family Weekly, December J5. 1963