Love Stories: Leslie and Jorge Leon

Fifteen-year-old Leslie was attending high school in Alabama when her mother planned a trip to see relatives in Guatamala.

Leslie asked if she could go. Her mother agreed, under the condition that she return to the U.S. to complete her education.

Leslie described that fateful day that she met her husband-to-be.  

“I was walking through the park, and I was wearing a black dress with light blue flowers, light blue shoes and a purse," she said. "I saw him and he saw me, and he smiled at me. That was it.

"But a few days later, I was walking on Principal Street, which is crowded with shops, like a big city street. He passed by on a motorcycle, and when he saw me, he jumped off, right in the street! He stopped just to see me, just to say hello.”

“I remember that I was following her and we made a date," said Jorge Leon. "I thought she was very pretty and I liked her very much.”

Leslie smiled as she remembered him using that exact phrase.

“He touched my arm and said, I like you very much," she recalled. “We made plans to go to a movie. I was supposed to meet him there, but that day it was raining so hard and I didn't go. I couldn't go, it was pouring out. But he knew that my aunt had a shop and he went to find out where I lived, and he showed up at the house soaking wet.”

“I invited him in and we talked, and he asked me out again. I was only fifteen years old, and he was a twenty-four-year-old medical student. We started to go out but my brother found out and he told my mother."

Her mother insisted she wanted meet Jorge.  

"He asked my mother if he could continue to see me, but she insisted we needed a chaperone. Very soon afterward, he asked me to marry him, and my parents had a fit! They insisted that I finish school.”

“Jorge promised my mother that if we were married, he would be sure that I would finish high school and that I could go on to college. I stayed in Guatamala, and we were married when I was sixteen years old. We have been married for fifty five years, and we have eleven grandchildren and ten great grandchildren.”