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Brenda and Wayne Voss have long history
When Wayne Voss went into the little southwestern justice of the peace office in a tiny town in New Mexico, he was looking to buy a marriage license. Little did he know that he and his high school sweetheart Brenda were going to be married, right then and there.
Voss was stationed in Albuquerque, and Brenda had flown out for the wedding.
"The Army wouldn't give me any time off, so I had one weekend," Voss says. "My sergeant was waiting in the car, because we were supposed to have a ceremony in town."
The Justice of the Peace, a Native American who spoke broken English, lived next door.
Voss recalls the conversation: "He said, 'I won't sell license if I don't marry you! I have my white shirt on--I have to marry you!' The man's wife was the witness, and we didn't even get a copy of the certificate."
The two Matthews, Mo. high school graduates were in for an adventure, after Wayne finished Army school in Pueblo, Colorado.
Wayne was sent overseas to the beautiful Italian city of Vicenza, where the Voss's daughter Erika was born.
"Now, that was a honeymoon!" exclaims Brenda Voss. "We loved it! There was art everywhere, though we didn't have the money to buy much. The churches were lit up at night. We had our bicycles to ride around on."
Most of the furniture was solid oak, made in Yugoslavia, and there was Milano glass.
The Vosses explained that the Italians loved Americans at that time.
There was no base housing, so they had to live out in the city.
"We were warned not to go to Sicily, because of the crime," Brenda says.
"The Communists were also very active during that time, so we had to be careful of them," Brenda explains. "They had May Day marches and such."
Wayne Voss was in the military 39 months, working in the field of atomic energy.
When the Vosses came home, Wayne's father, Dewey (D.L.) Voss was farming east of Advance, so Wayne and Brenda took up the farm life, with Wayne working 16 hours in the field, and Brenda tending the garden and raising their three children, Erika, Keith, and Karl.
"Wayne says he raised Karl in a bean field," laughs Brenda. "The kids had Tarzan ropes and played in the ditches with the snakes."
"Brenda was a 4-H leader and taught Sunday school," Wayne says, proudly. "She ran the church camp at Wapappello that's now called 'Camp Semo.'"
After about four years of farming with his father, Wayne formed a long-lasting partnership with Merritt Taylor.
"Merritt and Wayne were closer than brothers," Brenda says. "Merritt had six kids and we had three, so there were kids all up and down the gravel road."
All told, the Vosses farmed fifty years, selling out in 2005. Merritt Taylor died shortly after.
For awhile, they lived in Gipsy, west of Advance.
Today, Wayne and Brenda Voss live in Advance and operate Wise Buys Antiques in the big store that once held Partain Furniture, and before that, Richmond Lumber.
"We had a place in Cape called 'Paddle Wheel Plaza,'" explains Brenda. "An ice storm took it down, so we were looking for a place big enough for all our things and also for my brother, who was into antiques. Erika also needed a larger place to fix pianos. Some of that dirt (in the pianos) is 100 years old!"
The Voss formula for making a marriage work: "There has to be a lot of caring and commitment on both sides!" advises Brenda Voss. "It helps to have the same interests and be able to pull together."