John and Grace in 1944. (Photo courtesy of the Marquette Regional History Center)

During WWII, the draft and sudden deployments caused a significant spike in marriages. In 1942 alone, 1.8 million weddings took place, up over 80% compared to 1932. And two-thirds of those grooms were newly enlisted in the military. One of those war marriages united John DeVoe and Grace Lawson. This is their story.

John Herbert DeVoe was born in Fremont, Ohio in February 1921. His parents Benjamin and Esther DeVoe moved the family to Marquette ten years later. John graduated from John D. Pierce High School in 1939 and enrolled at Northern Michigan College of Education (now Northern Michigan University). While there he was first vice president of the Theta Omicron Rho fraternity and a member of the Music and Mathematics Clubs.

In 1943, John entered the U.S. Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet. He attended pre-flight school at Maxwell Field, Alabama, before undergoing gunnery training at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.

While in Georgia, John met Grace Madeline Lawson. Grace was born in Brooklyn, New York in November 1921 to Richard and Martha Lawson. The family moved to Georgia in 1926, followed by Florida around 1939. In 1940, Grace returned to Georgia to pursue a degree in liberal arts at Georgia State Women’s College.

Following Grace’s graduation in 1944, the two families began planning a wedding in Marquette. By the fall of 1944, John was in Texas receiving additional training in navigation.

According to stories John told later in life, Grace came to visit him in Texas. One day they were walking down the street and saw a wedding party walk out of a church. John and Grace looked at each other and said, “Why not?” So, on November 1, 1944, the couple got married in Texas.

But…their families had put a considerable amount of effort into planning a wedding in Marquette and the couple apparently didn’t want to disappoint their families. Instead of admitting to their parents that they were already married, they simply got married a second time, on November 11, 1944, in Marquette.

We don’t know if they ever confessed the ruse to their parents but later in life they celebrated November 1 as their official anniversary.

John went on to serve as a navigator on a B-17 Flying Fortress Bomber, of the 457th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force in Europe. After the war, the DeVoes returned to Marquette where John finished his undergraduate degree in 1946. He taught music in Crystal Falls for two years before earning a Master of Art’s degree in music at the University of Michigan.

Following grad school, the family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1950 where John again taught music in the public schools. In 1978, John retired from teaching. The DeVoes lived in Grand Rapids for 50 years, with summers spent at the family cottage in Marquette.

Following John’s retirement, he and Grace spent winters in Mexico and Florida, experiencing many great adventures traveling along the Mexican highways, always making new friends along the way. In her leisure time, Grace loved art and crafts. Over the years, she knit over 4,000 baby hats which were donated to various Shriner’s Children’s Hospitals. Every family member and friend who had a newborn, received a hat from Gracie.

In their later years, the couple returned to Marquette where they eventually resided at Brookridge Heights Assisted Living. Grace passed first in September 2013, followed by John in September 2019. In John’s obituary, their granddaughter, Ann Alexander-Golden, described music as the “family disease,” as family members were either musicians, married to them, or both. Two of the couple’s three sons were music educators, as was one grandson, one granddaughter, and one grandson-in-law. Their oldest great-grandson even played John’s old tuba.