The Wedding Bell Was at the End of a Typewriter Carriage

Myrtle in later life.

The Reverend Errett Cornelius Sechler of the Central Christian Church knew just what to do when Myrtle Lowany Lawson and Archie Franklin Breedlove asked him to marry them at the Springfield, Missouri, courthouse on Myrtle’s 20th birthday, September 13, 1934. He got out his typewriter.

Neither Myrtle nor Archie could hear or speak. They arrived at the county recorder’s office on the morning of their wedding and wrote out their request for a marriage license for the deputy recorder Mildred Firestone. Myrtle and Archie then asked Mildred to call the Reverend Sechler.

When Reverend Sechler arrived at the courthouse, he was at first nonplussed as to how to proceed. He had no knowledge of sign language, nor did he know whether Myrtle and Archie could lip read. The only solution, he quickly figured, was to take out his typewriter. On it he typed the wedding ceremony directions in triplicate and handed a copy each to the bridge and groom.

As the good reverent read down the sheet, the happy couple nodded their ascent.

Myrtle, from Bristow, Oklahoma, and Archie, from Smithfield, Missouri, had met and fallen in love at the Missouri School for the Deaf in Fulton. They went on to have three children and remained married for almost 14 years, until Archie died suddenly of a heart attack, aged 48, in 1948. Myrtle remarried in 1956 and died in Monett in 1990, aged 75. The Reverend Sechler, born in Buffalo, Missouri, in 1890, died in Seattle in 1976, aged 85.

What typewriter did he use to marry Myrtle and Archie? No-one may ever know. I‘m plumping for a Corona.