Every Marriage Affects Every Other Marriage

Marriage matters – and on many levels.

This past Valentine’s Day, I was invited to address a local chapter of the Colorado Springs Rotary Club. Given the timing of the holiday, it was requested that I speak on a related subject.

Rotary was founded back on February 23, 1905 by a gentleman named Paul Harris. The Chicago attorney was looking for a way for professionals to exchange ideas and build friendships. In time, the organization began extending their scope to include service and humanitarian projects. Today, the group claims over 1.2 million members worldwide.

Lunchtime “Rotary” talks don’t usually lend themselves to romance, but I quickly decided to talk about the power of marriage. In particularly, I spoke about unions that shaped the city of Colorado Springs – and impacted countless lives in the process.

That’s because everything affects everything else, especially when it comes to the sacredness of marriage. It’s an anthropological fact that marriage is good for men and women – and society.

We often hear the claim that marriage is a private affair. “What goes on in a marriage is of no concern to anyone else but the two people in the relationship.” But it’s just not true. 

Colorado Springs was founded by General William Palmer, a former Civil War Union veteran who was looking to establish a north-south railroad. Surveying the area, Palmer assumed any town would closely resemble other railroad stops. In other words, a rustic, simple outpost designed to meet the most basic needs of crew and passengers.

But then he met Queen Mellen, the daughter of a New York lawyer. He was smitten. Only problem was the 19-year-old cultured woman didn’t want to live in the unsettled west void of nice things.

So, Will Palmer decided to build her the city of her dreams, beginning with a castle of her own near a majestic red rock formation. The rocks would later be known as the “Garden of the Gods” and the castle would eventually become home to the Navigators, the beloved Christian discipleship ministry founded by Dawson Trotman.

Palmer commissioned a wide range of building, donated land for churches, a college, and numerous schools, including one for the deaf. He also built numerous parks designed to accentuate the natural beauty. 

In short, it was his love for Queen and their marriage that motivated Will to build a city that would become the envy of the world.

Several decades later, another swashbuckling bachelor came to Colorado Springs in search of fame and fortune. His name was Spencer Penrose. He was from a prominent, wealthy Philadelphia family. His brothers were a US senator and Republican Party leader, a noted geologist, and a successful medical doctor. 

“Spec,” as he was known, graduated last in his class at Harvard University in 1886. An adventurer and a playboy, Penrose refused a traditional job offer at a bank in Philadelphia and headed west with no clear intentions or any idea of what might be in store for him.

Penrose suffered lots of business failures before striking gold in Cripple Creek. He transitioned to copper and was making lots of money, but had no real point or purpose.

But then he met Julie MacMillan, a widow who turned his life upside down. Wrote his biographer Marshall Sprague, “He did not emerge from adolescence until he gathered his courage and tremblingly took a wife at the age of forty-one … For her and her alone, he tempered his fierce egotism, his instinctive materialism…”

In the coming years, Spencer Penrose would build the Broadmoor Hotel, one of the finest five-star resorts in the world. Julie tamed Spec like nothing and no one else could. The Penrose fortune helped fund numerous charities and organizations. 

In 1947, a man named Don Wilson purchased thousands of acres of ranchland in northwestern Colorado Springs. Wilson’s daughter and son-in law, Marian and Russ Wolfe, moved to Colorado to help work on the ranch. 

The Flying W Ranch started as a breeding operation for cattle, but the Wolfes expanded to begin hosting “chuckwagon suppers” and a western stage show with cowboy music. Before long, well over a hundred thousand were coming to the ranch each summer for an evening out under the stars.

The Wolfes became the face of Colorado Springs tourism, and have been credited with helping attract the U.S. Air Force Academy to the city.

Three good marriages changed not just the face of a single city, but the lives of millions of people who were drawn to it, and maybe even found their calling and purpose as a result of being where they were.

The social science confirms that good things happen when we follow God’s rules, especially when it comes to the institution of marriage.

Dr. Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, observed, “Fixing what ails America starts with renewing marriage and family life, especially in poor and working-class communities where the fabric of family life is weakest.”

That’s because every marriage affects every other marriage.