Ordinarily,

an article like the following would appear elsewhere in

this paper:

A wedding

of Fayette County interest took place Aug. 7 in Jefferson

County, Ga., as Joyce Drinkwater of Louisville, Ga.,

owner and editor-publisher of The News and Farmer,

married Cal Beverly of Peachtree City, editor-publisher

of The Citizen.

The couple

exchanged vows under a camp meeting tabernacle at Mt.

Moriah Campground near Matthews. The communion service

was led by the Rev. Danny Treadway of Louisville United

Methodist Church, the bride's congregation, and the Rev.

Mark Baldwin of Peachtree Christian Fellowship, where the

groom is a member.

Dwain

Little directed the chancel choir of Louisville UMC. A

"Gospel Sing and Celebration" followed

dinner-on-the-grounds.

But

ordinary this story is not.

Those may

be the facts about Cal and Joyce's wedding, but they lack

the old/new, high tech/homespun yin/yang of the event

itself and the way it came to be. One could hardly script

a more symbolic bridge between millennia.

In some

ways, this pairing could not be more - as Joyce

herself described it last winter - "21st

century: two-town, two-career."

Let me back

up a little. Cal was extremely interested, and hung on my

every word when I told him about our daughter Jean's

having met her husband-to-be via Christian Connections,

an Internet dating service.

Little did

I know then that he had met Joyce in precisely the same

way, at precisely the same time, their relationship also

moving swiftly from cyberspace to telephone calls into

the wee hours.

Not

surprisingly, the fact that both are newspaper publishers

provided a base of understanding between them. Joyce said

one of her girlfriends put it best: "Here was

someone who `gets me'... and still likes me."

But Cal's

memo breaking the news to his staff revealed the dilemma

their professions created: "Joyce has deep roots in

her community and has no plans to sell her paper,"

the only one in Jefferson County. She's a very hands-on

owner, covering meetings, writing stories and columns,

selling ads, doing layout.

token, he said, "I have no plans to leave [The

Citizen.]"

Couldn't

they work together? "She told me clearly she wants

to marry me, not work for me." And vice versa.

The

reactions of their children were mixed, to say the least.

Cal's are adults, and mostly supportive if cautious.

Joyce's boys are 13 and 9, and seem to like Cal a lot.

And yes,

the difference in the couple's ages has raised an eyebrow

or two.

There are

philosophical differences too. You may have noticed that

Cal is a conservative. Make that A Conservative. Joyce

calls herself a "moderate, at least."

Their

hometowns are dissimilar. Located about an hour southwest

of Augusta, Louisville is not on the way to anywhere, and

I have yet to find anyone (other than Cal) who had

visited there before Aug. 7. It's a jewel of a town set

in a county whose emerald fields belie the drought.

What a

heritage. Modeled after Philadelphia in 1786,

specifically for the purpose, Louisville was Georgia's

first capital, from 1796 to 1806. Broad Street, spine of

a vibrant downtown, is split by a strip of shade trees.

On it still

stands an oak-timbered open-air slave trading pavilion

built in the 1790s, the only such market remaining in the

state.

Then

there's Cal's town, incorporated in 1959, in a county

with more subdivisions than Joyce's has gnats.

But the

bottom line here (and I'm not revealing anything not

mentioned during the wedding ceremony itself) these were

two lonely people in search of companionship. They hold

in common what matters most, Joyce said: their faith and

a conviction that "we were brought together by God

and the rest will take care of itself."

So, I've

sketched for you how it happened. Let me try to paint the

wedding.

We drove to

the campground between fields filled with hayrolls baking

in the sun. Cars were already parking under the dark

trees, desperate for shade. To no avail: the thermometer

on our outside mirror read 101.

Women in

bright dresses were carrying dishes into the little

church annex, mercifully air-conditioned - then

cheerfully stepping back out into the noon heat. Dave

observed later that the only people complaining about the

heat were the "city folks" from Fayette County.

A dozen or

so ceiling fans tried valiantly to move the air under the

tabernacle - a vast permanent open roof similar to

the original built about 1829 - where a congregation

gathered on wooden benches and fluttered cardboard fans

with a picture of the bride and groom.

The choir

had been there rehearsing, since 10, and, I learned

later, most stayed through the hymn to sing following the

ceremony. We joined them in "Blessed Assurance"

and "Great is Thy Faithfulness."

Joyce wore

a soft cafe au lait two-piece dress and the kind of hat

usually described as a "picture hat," and

carried a mixed bouquet of flowers. Her younger son

struck the noon hour by tugging the rope on an ancient

bell, and her niece, a dimpled doll in a long flowered

dress, strewed petals as Joyce entered on Cal's arm.

The scene

could not have been more traditional and old-timey, but

with surprises: Gospel music to an electronic keyboard.

Galvanized washtubs of lemonade and tea awash with ice

cubes. Covered dishes and homemade ice cream.

The bride's

father's gleaming Honda Gold Wing three-wheeled

motorcycle.

Several

generations of Jefferson countians gathered in heat that

wilted sunflowers. Several more rested cool underground

on the gentle hill above the tabernacle.

The choir's

"I wanna live in a Lord-built house" inspired a

few guests to wonder where the house would be.

Enough to

"live in a Lord-built house with a structure built

on love, with a rock foundation under me and the Heavenly

Father above!"

<!--##############