By MADDY VITALE
Every bride wants her dress to be remembered for its elegance, beauty, uniqueness or maybe its simplicity.
But not all gowns are quite so memorable, at least not quite so special that it lands in a museum.
Well, Ocean City resident Elizabeth (Burton) Deaner’s gown happens to be on display at an unlikely place -- the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
But going back to her wedding day in England, on Oct. 21, 1944, when she wed the late WWII paratrooper Pvt. Charles Deaner of the 82nd Airborne Division, may make it seem a bit clearer.
Deaner, who is now 97 and residing at The Shores at United Methodist Communities, wore a parachute, well pieces of one.
It was a parachute that Charles Deaner brought back from the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944.
“Because of the war and things being rationed, they didn’t have any material. She didn’t have a wedding dress,” Elizabeth’s daughter-in-law Colleen Deaner, who is married to Dave Deaner, explained Monday. “She could have worn one of her sisters’ wedding dresses. She was one of 10. But she liked the material from the parachute. It was different.”
The wedding party.
And so began the story of the “Parachute Bride.”
Deaner, who met her late husband in her hometown of Hillmorton, England, at a dance, went into town in her native England.
“She talked with a seamstress and they decided what to do. She remembers picking all of the string out of it,” Colleen Deaner, of Egg Harbor Township, recalled. “It was her being creative and that this happened to come to her. This parachute became her gown.”
On July 11 at 11:30 a.m., Ocean City American Legion Post 524 will honor Elizabeth Deaner, the “Parachute Bride,” with a special recognition and ceremony.
After the war, Elizabeth and Charles Deaner would go on to have five children, four boys and a girl.
They lived in Pennsauken. She was a stay-at-home mom, while he worked as a truck driver.
The gown that was once a parachute was the creation of the bride and a seamstress.
But for their children, there was always a bit of mystery and intrigue surrounding the parachute and the story of the gown, since Charles Deaner didn’t speak too much about the war, the family said.
“We don’t know exactly how he came about the parachute. The men in general didn’t talk about much after the war,” Collen Deaner explained, adding that her late father, Thomas Hayes, became friendly with Charles Deaner.
And it would take nearly 70 years, for the wedding gown to arrive at the museum and become a piece of history that could be on display.
“My dad died in 1992. And my mom had her wedding dress for years in a ball in a plastic bag,” Dave Deaner said. “One day, we were at a medal presentation for my late father-in-law who was in the same 82nd Airborne Division. We started talking and said, ‘You know, we should put this dress in the 82nd Airborne Museum.’”
Elizabeth did not hesitate to give over her wedding gown to be donated to the museum.
The Deaner family visits Elizabeth Deaner regularly at her home in Ocean City.
Dave and Colleen Deaner drove down to the museum in 2012 to Fort Bragg, N.C., to have a curator authenticate the dress.
“The curator said, ‘This is the real deal.’ And I said, ‘We wouldn’t have driven down here nine hours if it wasn’t,'" Dave said with a laugh.
It would take several more years for the “war bride” to visit her gown.
“She was pleased. She couldn’t believe how nice it looked,” Dave said.
“We all went down for the 74th anniversary of D-Day,” he noted. “My mom just looked at the dress and couldn’t believe how nice it looked after being in a ball in a bag for all those years. She was pleased.”
Although a lifetime has passed and many people may not know that a woman who married a military man she met in her homeland of England, Elizabeth Deaner was a “Parachute Bride” and she keeps the stories of the past, the days when she was a “war bride” in the past, her gown, its uniqueness, its significance is out on display in a museum down south for all to see.
Pvt. Charles Deaner and Elizabeth (Burton) Deaner.
