Lynn's Comments: Before he bit the bullet and proposed to Joan, Alan did ask us a lot of questions about things like cohabitation, home ownership, the right to go fishing if he wanted to. One really good thing was that we had come from a very solid home. Sure, our folks had their ups and downs. They both came from very different backgrounds and were often at odds with each other, but they lived in an era when you saw it through to the end. Marriage was more than a contestable contract--it was, "'til death do you part."