A wedding and perhaps a secret....

        Meanwhile, what about Ima’s love life? When she was thirteen, Aunt Fanny had told her that because her mother had died of tuberculosis, that she would be a carrier of the disease--and therefore must never marry and have children. Did Ima really believe that?

         Was she reconciled to a single life? In those days the worst thing that could happen to a young woman was not to find a husband, and to become an “old maid.”

         Ima must surely have thought about that when she traveled to Lampasas, Texas, to attend a wedding in April 1909. When R. Lee Blaffer, a founder of the Humble Oil Co., married Sarah Campbell, daughter of the late W.T. Campbell, a founder of the Texas Co. (Texaco) in Lampasas, Texas, Ima was the maid of honor. She would soon be 27 years old. Perhaps she thought of the “secret” she had in Germany.         

         Back in Houston, Ima threw herself into the cultural scene, and she began to teach music to a select number of pupils. She was a founding member of the Chatauqua Study Club in 1909. The next year she joined the Episcopal Church in Houston, a decision she had been thinking about for some time.

        

         Then, for reasons that to this day remain unknown, she suddenly decided to return to Germany in 1910.