It’s Throwback Thursday and we have a love story to share with you!
This picture (Margaret Dodge, the previous owner of the Dodge Building, on the left and Paddington owner, Judy Patterson, on the right) was printed in The Ashland Daily Tidings for a story that ran on Saturday, June 19th, 1976. It’s an article about the Dodge family who constructed the building for their furniture store in 1904.
The story shared the following anecdote:
“When Mrs. [Margaret] Dodge first came to Ashland, she was a young widow and a schoolteacher. She was also a frequent visitor in the home of Will Dodge and his first wife.
Shortly after Will’s wife died, she returned to her native New York state to go to school. Will told [his brother] Lewis he wanted some time off from the store, got on the train, went to New York, and persuaded her to return to Ashland.
Margaret said, “He was a very dignified man, and all those times I visited him and his first wife in his home, he was always Mr. Dodge to me. But he was a very warm and generous man, and we had a wonderful life together until he died 12 years ago.”
A few days after the story was published, Mrs. Dodge wrote a letter to the editor:
“Regarding the story in the Saturday Tidings about the Dodge Building, I should like to correct several items and impressions, if I may.
The first Mrs. Dodge, Ina, was my dearest friend and I was in the Dodge home often, but it was NOT “a short time after her death” that Mr. Dodge came to New York to see me. I was there getting an advanced degree and had plans to remain in New York.
He came back late in the year to urge me to come back for the summer teaching at the Normal School [now Southern Oregon University] so that we could get better acquainted. I did come back and, as stated, he did “take much time from the business” and at the end of the summer we were married.
Since everyone loves a love story, I will say that when he urged marriage he said, “I have had twenty-five perfect years and do not see why I can’t have more of them.” When he passed away in ’63, we had been married [for] twenty-eight years and he counted them as perfect ones also.”
