Happy anniversary to us

Today is our seventh wedding anniversary.
We were married under a quilt - quite fitting, considering Maria's love of quilting.
The ceremony was performed by Boone County (Ind.) Clerk Lisa Garoffolo in the rotunda of the Boone County Courthouse in Lebanon.
Suspended above us was the Boone County Quilt, a huge work that was created in the months leading up to the July 4, 1976 U.S. Bicentennial celebration. The quilt was sewn by women from all over the county and represents each community and township in the form of a county map.
The wedding was a small, impromptu affair. We decided on Monday to get married and did it on Tuesday. Maria's family was there, except for her mother who had to work. I put out an invitation to the Indianapolis BMW Club, but only Andy and Jackie Anders were able to respond on such short notice. Maria's flowers came from her own front yard. The reception was at Ice Cream Paradise, a Lebanon drive-in ice cream stand that also had a playground for her nieces and nephews.
The whole thing was in pretty stark contrast to the elaborate and insanely expensive weddings we've photographed in the past three years.
If you go to the Boone County Clerk's office and look up our marriage license, be sure to scan back a few pages to see William Shatner's signature. He married a Zionsville woman in Boone County a few days before our wedding.

G. Hamilton Rigg

This is G. Hamilton "Ham" Rigg, at work as news editor of the Tipton Tribune in November, 1966.
Ham was my editor at my first newspaper job. I worked at the Tribune from September 1, 1966 to Feb. 3, 1967 when I left to be a reporter at The Indianapolis News.
I learned a lot of stuff from Ham, who was a genuinely nice guy and also covered sports for the Tribune. I'm told he was instrumental in a lot of Tipton County kids getting athletic scholarships to colleges and universities.
Mostly, I remember Ham as a lonely little guy who drank every night and always smelled of booze. I heard he died of cancer a few years after I left Tipton, so I guess I caught him in the twilight of his newspaper career.
At some point in his career, Ham was a sportswriter for the Muncie Star. The Muncie Star Press memorialized him with the Ham Rigg Award, given to the most outstanding athlete at the Central Relays in Muncie. This year's winner was Eric Streit, a senior at Shenandoah High School.