Marriage Around the Corner

Speaking with an authority on marriage derived from 20 years as rector of Manhattan's famed Little Church Around the Corner, Dr. J. (for Jackson) H. (for Harvelle) Randolph Ray deplores hasty wartime weddings. He thinks they are usually the result of "glamor and excitement rather than genuine affection," do not give the couple a chance to adjust to each other, are especially unfortunate if immediate offspring result. But Rector Ray knows that warriors and their girls will continue to get married no matter what he thinks, so offers the following seven rules for war brides:

1) Set up a home of your own; 2) Don't fellow him around; 3) Keep in touch with your husband's family; 4) Be willing to live on your husband's financial scale to save him embarrassment; 5) Keep busy; get a job; 6) Try to grow in understanding with your husband even though he is away; 7) Cultivate faith in God and in each other.

Last week, with New York's Bishop William Thomas Manning, Dr. Ray co-officiated at his own daughter's wartime wedding. But there was nothing hasty about it. Pretty, popular Kathryna Hoffman Ray, 19, whose mother was a Manhattan socialite, was a childhood friend of her 27-year-old Army Air Forces lieutenant groom, Courtlandt Nicoll, Manhattan socialite whose family attends the Little Church. Among the bride's wedding presents was her father's latest book, dedicated to her: Marriage Is a Serious Business (Whittlesey House; $2). It is full of the rector's warmly human advice to marrying couples, and of anecdotes about weddings at the Little Church.

Just east of Fifth Avenue on 29th Street, the rambling, red brick Little Church Around the Corner (officially the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration) is one of the busiest parishes in the U.S. The bustle does not come from its 666 High Church parishioners, but from its international fame as a lucky place to get married. In its 95 -year history there have been over 100,000 weddings.

Rector Ray, 57, is a friendly Mississippi-born ex-newspaperman who gave up golf for gardening because "it is better for my waistline." He spends most of his time interviewing and advising prospective brides & grooms. Because he will not marry divorced persons, elopers, or girls under 21 who lack parental consent, he turns away some 500 couples a year. Yet in his 20-year rectorate, he has approved 50,000 weddings, performed some 25,000 of them himself.

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