William McGowan made it home from World War I just in time to plan a Christmas wedding with his lifelong sweetheart, Ida. Everyone said they made the perfect couple. Whenever they were together, her practical approach to life made the perfect foil to his zany charm and incessant humor.
Bill's homecoming party was a time of great rejoicing. The tiny town of Topaz, Missouri, consisted mostly of his mother's Turnbull family connections. Bill and Ida were the toast of the town that night. Women of the town presented them with a friendship quilt in the double wedding ring pattern. William's right ear ached abominably, but what was that to having a clear bill of health from the army doctor and a pretty girl on his arm? He ignored the pain and enjoyed to the full their time in the spotlight.
It was not to be their last time with the town's full attention. The lovely Ida, in the full bloom of youth and beauty, came down with a fever the next week. She died of influenza three days before Christmas. At the precise time planned for their wedding, Bill McGowan and Ida were interred side by side near that same little church on the hill. Bill McGowan had died a day after his intended bride of an acute ear infection.
But family lore to the third and fourth generation said that Bill McGowan died of a broken heart.
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