He met Leila Katherine Routh who had moved to Nashville in 1937 and attended the First Baptist Church which he had joined earlier. In Salyersville, his mother had been very active in the local First Baptist Church and she encouraged him to join a similar church in Nashville. Georgetown College was also a Baptist institution. Leila and Wendell were in the same young people’s group which was directed by Leila’s aunt (for whom she was named), Leila Routh McKinney, the wife of famed Baptist hymn writer and composer, B.B. McKinney. Leila was born in Dallas June 17, 1917. She lived in El Paso for a few years where her mother, like Julia Sublett, died of TB when Leila was eight years old. She then attended school at San Marcos Academy in Texas, and Classen High School in Oklahoma City when her dad moved from his job as editor of the Texas Baptist Standard to become editor of the Oklahoma Baptist Messenger. After one year at OBU, where she was elected Freshman Queen, Leila transferred to Mary Hardin Baylor College in Belton, Texas. Upon graduation just two years later, she moved to Nashville and took a job working as a secretary at the Baptist Sunday School Board.

Leila: We met each other in the First Baptist Church in Nashville, TN and Leila introduced us - she was trained union director and she wanted somebody to make a poster. So she had an appointment with this young man who was there working in an advertising agency and he was going to make a poster for her training union. She went down early to meet with him and after they met, well I came in and she introduced us. He told somebody that he had seen me the week before, now what was it you said when you saw me? [Le1]

Wendell: I was with Harry Bowles that night, we had come down to the training union assembly and I looked over and I saw this beautiful girl sitting in the front role. I told Harry, you see that girl sitting there? That's my wife, he says your crazy - and I said wait and see. That's the way it happened and I finally got to meet her, through her aunt Leila. [Le1]

Leila: Did it really happen that way? Did you really say that?

Wendell: It sure did. I know it always made a good story. What year was that?

Leila: That was 1937, I had just come to Nashville, I had spent the summer up there at Ridgecrest and I had just come to Nashville to work with the Sunday School another fellow that I had met at the Board and I was really going with out in Texas and so I wasn't really looking around for anybody. I didn't really know him all that well, except I had dated him a lot in Ridgecrest. [Le1]

John: What did you'll do or go on your date?

Leila: He asked me for a date and I guess we went over to Eddie Ramoe's house, we mostly went to somebody's house and we went to the show - there wasn't too much to do in those days. [Le1]

John: Was that in Nashville?

Leila: Yeh, they were downtown in those days, they didn't have any Malls or anything like that. We went up to Candy Land that was like a meeting place. We used to double-date a lot with Jerry [Smith] and she came to Nashville about the same time I did, she was from Oklahoma and we joined the church about the same time in Nashville. She worked up at Graces, which was a dress shop and I worked for the Sunday school board. She met Mac - he was teaching at Vanderbilt so we used to go to the show together, double-date and then, they come out to Aunt Leila’s house. She lived at the YWCA, and I lived at Aunt Leila's. Then Mary Sue Barnette was the daughter of the man I worked for and we had a trio that we used to sing at different places, so we would go out to Mary Sue's house a lot of the time and practice and we were all three going with fellas for a couple of years and after we had been going together for about a year, well, Wendell gave me a ring, in October I think and then in May, well, we got married the following June then. I was maid of honor in Mary Sue's wedding one Saturday and I got married the next Saturday and Jerry got married the following Saturday. [Le1]

[note from conversation in Dec 1997: In the fall of 1937 after Leila and Walter had been dating a few months, they drove to Louisville on a Friday night where Walter stayed at the Henry Clay Hotel and Leila stayed with her brother, Porter and his wife Ruth who’d married June 7, 1936, and were staying in apartments on the Baptist Seminary campus where Porter was taking some courses for the year or semester. Staying at the Henry Clay Hotel were a several of Walter’s family who’d driven in to meet Leila. Paul and Ruth Arnett had driven over from Lexington (where Paul had an architect office on the Square) and brought with them Mrs. E.B. (Lucy) Arnett from Salyersville and their two young children: Alvin (b. 6 Feb 1935, nearly 2 yo) and Barbara (b. 2 Jan 1937, just under a year.) Also joining the group was Lucy’s sister and Wendell’s aunt: Lillian G. Jones, aged 57, who came over from Villa Grove (near Tuscola, Ill.) After the weekend, Leila and Wendell returned to Nashville.--jwa] [Le2]

Wendell wrote the following letter to E.C. Routh, Leila’s father, asking his permission to marry her:

1912 Adelicia Avenue [Wendell’s address when he went back to Nashville to work]
Nashville, Tennessee
December 11, 1937
Dear Dr. Routh,
You may think it strange receiving a letter from me, a person whom you have never seen. I am writing you on a subject of great importance which I trust and pray you will give due consideration. It means more to me and my life than anything else in the world. I should like very much to have the pleasure of meeting you but since this is impossible at the present time, I am writing to you and I hope that you will believe that what I say is from my heart. I have always been a believer in prayer. Since I first met your fine daughter, Leila Katherine, in September [1937] I have been the happiest person in the world. Prior to that time I had asked God many times to help me find my life companion. I believe He led me to her, for since that time we have both been so happy. I just constantly pray and thank God for bringing into my life such a sweet, Christian girl. She has meant and does mean more to my life than I can ever express in words. We have prayed together many times, asking God to show us the right way and I believe He has. We have been sensible about it and have both considered it from many angles, its meanings and its responsibilities. With God to guide us we will make a success of it, for without God we can do nothing. I have talked with Mrs. McKinney and I have told her just how I feel about Leila Katherine. She gave me some good advice. She told me that the best think I could offer Leila Katherine was as clean, sound body and a good family background and I am offering her just that. I told Mrs. McKinney that I thought Leila Katherine the finest, sweetest and the most beautiful girl I had ever known and I mean it. She is not only beautiful outwardly but she is such a beautiful character spiritually as well. I can never express in words just how much she means to my life and future happiness. I love her with all my heart and I want to marry her. You will never realize how happy you will make my life. I do love her more than anything else in the world and I pray that you will grant this request. I will always enjoy working hard to make Leila Katherine happy.
Sincerely yours,
Wendell Arnett

They were married June 10, 1939, in Leila’s high school home in Oklahoma City by her father who was then editor of the Oklahoma Baptist Messenger. Lucile, Leila’s sister was the maid of honor, and Porter served as the best man. Wendell’s mother, Lucy Jones, took the train from Kentucky to Oklahoma for the wedding.

Leila: We got married June 10, 1939.  I went to OK City; my mother and father wanted me to come back home and get married, cause that was the way people did it back in those days, so I got married in our house at home because, well, I didn't know too many people, I had been gone from home so long, so everybody that would come to our wedding would fit into our house. So they just fixed up an alter at the end of a dining room and I marched around through the living room and into the dining room and then Wendell, Let's see, Porter was his best man and Copass gave me away because my father was performing the ceremony. Lucile sang ["Because"], Elizabeth wasn't there because she was in Africa and of course she couldn't come home. Ross and Fay were there but they weren't in the wedding, and Ruth was there to but she wasn't in the wedding. My bridesmaids were three girls I had gone to Mary Hardin-Baylor with. They rode up with Lucile I believe from Texas, they all three lived in Texas. Two of them I hadn't seen since my wedding and one of them I saw several times but she finally disappeared somewhere. I don't know what happened to her. They never did know what happened to her. She had a mental break-down, I guess it was because she roomed with me. She finally had a mental break-down about 25 years later. I used to write to her all of the time and I'd see her every time I'd go to Texas but then one time she was down in Galveston in a psychiatric thing for a long time, she used to write me the strangest letters. Then she got out and everybody thought she was O.K., but I talked to her brother in Austin and he said that she had disappeared and they never did know what happened to her. After her mother died she lived in Divine, TX and for a long time she worked down in Venezuela, he father was a doctor and they lived in Venezuela. He father died, her brother then worked down there in the oil business and she went down there and worked, doing office work. I keep thinking maybe one day she will turn up, but she never has. [Le2]

Leila: We got married in OK City at 10:00 in the morning, and we drove to Dallas and spent our honeymoon there at Adoplis Hotel in Dallas. We went up to the desk to register, this fella said, OH' NEWLYWEDS! We were trying to keep it a secret you know, and everybody looked around the lobby looking right at us. Rice was falling out of everything, and he was so rattled, instead of signing his name, he signed his father's name. He signed Mr. and Mrs. E.B. Arnett, because he had always addressed letters to him in Salyersville, so he signed his name. [Le3]
Wendell:  The Adoplis Hotel in Dallas was built by the August Busch, of St. Louis, it was one of the finest hotels in Dallas.

Leila: We ate supper at the hotel bakery. It was kinda of a trip, I had remembered Dallas, but I hadn't been there in such a long time. So we went on Saturday and the next day we went to Gaston Avenue Baptist Church where I used to go to church and Dr. Craig was Pastor. We met him before the service and he introduced us and made us come down front and stand. Everybody came by and spoke to us, I was embarrassed to death! He was the sweetest person though, he was always such a good Pastor, good person. Then we went from there over to Arkansas, we had a little cottage on Lake Hamilton, right outside of Hot Springs, we were on our way back to Nashville. We stopped there, we spent several days there. We had a boat and we went out row boating and Wendell wanted to show me how strong he was. He took off his shirt and we went row-boating out there on the lake. He got the worst sun-burn, he got blistered, I couldn't touch him for a week, and he was just a solid blister. [Le3]
Wendell: I couldn't even put a shirt on for two weeks.
Leila: Then when we left there we went down to Florence, AL and spent a night with Mary Sue and her husband down there. She married an undertaker so we stayed at the funeral home. Their apartment was upstairs over the funeral home and so we stayed there. Mary Sue was playing deep purple on the piano. We spent a night with them and then we went on back to Nashville. [Le3]
Leila: Mary Sue's name was Yokom, she married Noble Yokum, but unfortunately that didn't last too long, he was real mean to her and it was a real sad experience. She claimed that half of the bodies were not dead when they brought them into the funeral home. [Le3]]
Leila: Anyway, it was real traumatic experience for her and her family. She came back home and then years and years later she married Roupen Gulbenk. She and Roupen had been friends. He played the violin beautifully and she always accompanied him. They had always been good friends, they never were in love with each other or anything, well, years later they began to look at each other romantically and so they finally got married. They had a real good marriage..

Newly Weds Before the War

In Nashville we lived all summer [of 1939] in Mr. And Mrs. Bennette's apartment, as they were going to be out of town all summer and charged us very cheap rent. By the time they returned, we had rented an apartment at 1607 Linden. It was in a lovely big house owned by Mrs. Todd, an elderly widow, who was nearly blind. She lived downstairs and we lived upstairs for three years until Wendell went into the army. We paid $37.50 a month rent for the apartment which consisted of four big rooms and a bath. One of the big room areas opened onto the stairway. We used it for a dining room and art studio for Wendell. The large kitchen had seven windows and must have originally been a sleeping porch. It had not been modernized, as the sink and drain board were very small, and there were no built-in cabinets. It did have a pantry, however, a small electric stove which was new, and a table and a medium-size refrigerator. The other two rooms we used for living room and bedroom. We had a studio couch in the living room, which was not very comfortable, but Lucile and Clinton slept on it all summer one year when they came to Peabody for summer school. We enjoyed them so much, that summer, and had an especially good time when the four of us, Aunt Leila and Gene rode down to Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain for the Fourth of July. The men tried to get us to ride the incline train up to Lookout Mountain, but they finally had to go alone as we were too afraid! When they came back down, they drove us up there - so we did get to see the pretty view after all! [Leila memoir II]

He continued to work at the advertising agency and did other free lance work. He also began drawing some cartoons and hoped eventually to have some of them accepted by a national syndicate.

Then we went to Nashville and we went the kinda around-a-bout way, because we both had to be back at work. Our first home was an apartment, Mr. and Mrs. Barnette had, they were going to be gone for the summer and they let us live in their apartment in Nashville while they were gone. We lived there for about a couple of months until we found a place and we moved into a place about two blocks from where they lived on Linden, right off Belmont Blvd. in Nashville. 1607 Linden, we had an upstairs apartment. Ms. Todd was an elderly woman who lived downstairs and she had made her upstairs into an apartment, so she would have somebody with her. We lived there for three years and then Wendell joined up in Uncle Sam's Army because he felt like he was going to be drafted if he didn't. Everybody was going to the war. [Le4]

When Leila went to Nashville to work as a secretary at the SS Board, she lived with her Aunt Leila and Uncle B.B. McKinney "Uncle Mack." She didn’t won a car, and either took the bus or was driven to the SS Board by Uncle Mack. Later, when she started dating Walter, he would pick her up and take her to work in his Chevy coupe. He also taught her how to drive. [Anec]

Leila stated that her father, Dr. E.C. Routh, and step-mother, Alice, hadn’t owned a car until she was a student at Mary Hardin-Baylor (about 1936.) E.C. had mainly relied on trains, for which--as a minister--he had a free pass, buses, taxis and friends. When they lived in Oklahoma City in the early 1030’s a couple in the church, the Mashburns, would pick Leila up Sunday morning and return her later. Her parents were often out of town on weekends since he would often be asked to preach at various churches. E.C. and Alice would take the bus over to Shawnee every week to work on getting out the Oklahoma Baptist Messenger at the University Press located on the OBU campus. [Anec]

Leila’s salary when she worked at the SS Board was $80 a month while Walter was making $60 a month ($15 per week) working as an artist for the advertising agency. When the war broke out, and they moved to Baltimore, MD, Leila got a government job which paid considerably more than the S.S.B. After John was born in 1944 and while Walter was overseas, Leila drew a weekly check of $20 from the govt. As noted previously, when Walter went to work for the Courier in 1945 he was paid $60 a week which seemed like a huge amount to them based on their previous earnings. [Anec]

Lainie: Where had you been working Daddy?
Wendell: I was in the Warner Building downtown. We handled the advertising for WSM radio station, WLAC, I was the art director. [L]
Lainie: Was that [one furlough in 1943 from Ft. Meade] the first time you'd been to Salyersville?
Leila: Oh no, we’d been married for three years and...no, I went up to Salyersville before we got married, I went home with him one weekend, met his folks and everything.
Lainie: What was that like, do you remember that?
Leila: The first time I went up there it was a very different experience. He was working in Nashville and we drove up to Salyersville, it was about an 8 hour trip. We left right after work that afternoon and we were real late getting in there that night, maybe we left at noon, I don't know, but it was late at night when we got in there. I spent a couple of days. He took me all around town to meet his relatives and see the town. They thought I was a rich Indian from OK.
Wendell: When the wedding picture came out, they had her on the front page of Salyersville paper.
Leila: His family really rated in Salyersville!
John: Who was at home there in Salyersville?
Leila: No, there wasn't anybody there, his mother and dad and Bernice. Bernice, his little sister. They [Paul and Ruth] lived in Lexington I believe because we went by Lexington to see them. We went by there on the way back. I had already met them once before, one weekend when we first met each other, Porter and Ruth were going to the Seminary in Louisville and one weekend I came up to spend a weekend with them. Wendell drove me up. His mother was visiting in Louisville and Paul and Ruth were there. We all had lunch together, that was the first time I'd met his mother and his Aunt [Lillian] from Illinois was down. [L]
Wendell: The first car I had, Daddy told me I want you to go to Salyersville and find you a car. $650.00 I paid for a brand new Chevrolet Coupe. It was a 1937, I think I drove that back to Nashville. Later on I traded it in on a 1940; that is the one you saw in Pittsburgh.
Wendell: They [Grace and Oaks] had just gotten married [Jan or Feb 1938] when we came. They lived in that apartment across there.
Leila: They were still in that middle bedroom because I remember your mother was so embarrassed because they laughed and giggled all night. Mrs. Arnett you know, she was so proper and she was so embarrassed. I was across the hall there. I didn't think anything about it. His sister Bernice was there and his mother and father. How long did Grace and Oaks stay there in that house? They were just there shortly, they had just gotten married I think, and they were just there waiting for their apartment to get ready. I don't think they were there very long. Maybe they were getting their furniture or something. Paul had built that apartment house, that is the only thing still standing, I think they have a radio station in there. They had one side of it and Gracie just loved that apartment. That is all she ever wanted, she never did want this house she lived in. This house had been Uncle Glen's house and so Oaks bought it and he added on that kitchen and Den. Aunt Lulie - they lived there. [L]

Letter mailed February 10, 1941 from Aunt Leila to Wendell upon the news of Bernice’s death:

Dear Wendell,
I was stunned by your sad news. Your message reached me while I was out in West End visiting. Your hearts are grieving, I know. Our love, sympathy, and prayers are with you and yours – Words are inadequate to express how deeply I feel for you, your Mother and the other loved ones – especially your Mother. She will be so lonely, and many will be the times she will miss her even more than the rest of you will. The blessed thing is that you all know in a very real way the Heavenly Father who gives comfort, peace, grace and strength to his sorrowing children. He will support . She is only absent from the body, and present with the Lord.

Think of –
"Stepping on shore, and finding it’s Heaven;
Of taking hold of a hand, and finding it’s God’s hand;
Of breathing new air, and finding it’s Celestial air;
Of feeling invigorated, and finding it immortality;
Of passing from storm and tempest, to an unknown calm;
Of waking and finding it’s Heaven"

"Shall I blame my Father’s wisdom?
Shall I sit enswathed in gloom,
When I know my Love is happy
Waiting in the other room?"

John 14 is the greatest comfort – Revelations 21:4 "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain."
We shall be thinking constantly, and praying for the Heavenly Father’s presence to be very real to you, and to sustain you.

Lovingly, Aunt Leila.

Wendell continued to work for the Robert G. Fields Advertising Agency and do free lance work on the side.  He worked in the hall of their Linden Lane apartment in Nashville, and copies of this work are displayed in the slide show for this period.  He continued to submit cartoons to the newspapers and various religious publications.  Whether the work he did for the Equitable Security Corporation was through the Advertising Agency or on his own is unknown.  The detail drawings on many of these Equitable sketches are exceptional and can be viewed at the slideshow for this period.

Slide Show for this period of Wendell's life (see also Leila slide show):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59496800@N04/sets/72157631976877679/show/