Andersons mark 50th anniversary


Roger and Beverly Anderson, then and now.

Roger and Beverley Anderson marked their 50th wedding anniversary last week, but they’re waiting until their daughter, Shelly Peterson, can be here in July to celebrate.
Roger, an Ozark County native, met Beverly Ann Lee in Springfield when he was working at McDonald’s while attending vo tech school and Beverly, a student at Draughon’s Business College, came in as a customer.
They dated six months before being married on June 28, 1968, at Grace United Methodist Church at Jefferson and Cherry streets in Springfield.
Beverly had grown up in Springfield, the daughter of the late Mel and Emma Lee. Roger had grown up on the farm in Mammoth owned by his parents, Ruby Anderson and the late Frank Anderson.
The highlight of their wedding – or maybe just the most memorable part of the event – was their drive to Branson after the ceremony.
“We had an escort out of Springfield with horns honking and lights flashing,” Roger wrote recently on Facebook, describing the trailing line of cars that followed them out of town.
On their way Branson for their honeymoon, “we smelled a strange odor in the car,” Roger said. It turned out that Roger’s best man, Danny Holmes, and some of his other buddies had put a big block of Limburger cheese on the manifold of Roger’s 1963 Chevy Impala. They had to pull over when Bev got sick due to the smell, which lasted “about a month,” Roger recalled Sunday.
That wasn’t the last prank pulled on the newlyweds. When they arrived back home to their upstairs apartment on St. Louis Street in Springfield, they found that Holmes and his cohorts, with Bev’s dad and uncle’s helping, had hung cowbells everywhere and removed all the labels from their canned goods.
After they finished their schooling, the Andersons moved back to the Anderson  family’s land in Mammoth, and they’ve been there ever since. Roger worked with his dad in their carpentry business for a while and then joined Baxter Lab in Mountain Home, Arkansas, in 1970. Bev stayed home to raise their two children (while Shelly now lives in Colorado, their son Bobby and his wife, Holly, live just down the road in Mammoth). She went to work at the lab in 1971. They rode to work together for more than 30 years. Beverly retired in 2003, and Roger retired a year later.
Today Bev enjoys scrapbooking and making greeting cards. Roger’s favorite  activities are hunting and fishing. They also enjoy spending time with their grandchildren, Damon Anderson, 4, and Lakely Anderson, 9.

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