B I O G R A P H Y page 3

In the spring of 1941, Villepigue was back in Wichita—this time for his own wedding. The bride was a Kansas girl, Maxine Virginia Brown of Salina. According to newspaper clippings, the small, simple ceremony was performed at St. James Episcopal Church on March 30. The guestbook includes the names of “Mr. & Mrs. Ike Ragon – Chicago, Ill.,”

and the Chanute Tribune’s society page (of which Martha Villepigue was editor) noted:

The past three years, Mr. Villepigue has been working with dance orchestras and is now with Ike Ragon and his orchestra from Chicago. They are on location in Wichita. Villepigue plays the clarinet, saxophone and does the arranging for the orchestra.

The newlyweds took the only honeymoon available—on the road with the band—to Norfolk, Virginia, in April, and later to Kansas City in the summer. In October, they arrived in Chicago, home base of bandleader Ike Ragon.