I enjoyed visiting with a couple last Thursday morning who had recently achieved their 50th wedding anniversary milestone. The couple stopped in to share a recipe with me that I wanted to try but our visit went from cooking to love stories.
I am in total awe of this couple. Not only are they the most kind hearted individuals, they have a gentle spirit about them that just makes you glad to be around them. Their good natured conversations between the two leave you smiling as you watch the two of them.
I wouldn’t want to embarrass the couple and mention them by name, but they shared a story how they both saw one another by happenstance in 1957. They didn’t realize it was each other until 2015 when they were looking through some old newspaper clippings from the West Side Journal newspaper in Port Allen, Louisiana.
While looking through the clippings last year, they came across a photo of the husband from when he was in the scouts. The picture was taken as the scouts were on a trip from Post 38 to Canada. That trip would have them traveling Highway 11 through Pachuta.
So in ’57, there were two vehicles of scouts and the husband was in the second vehicle which was the designated tail end Charlie of the convoy. As they were traveling north on Highway 11 to Columbus AFB the scouts drove through Pachuta. Walking along the road was a young girl struggling to carry a gas can back to the car where she and her mother had car trouble. When the two cars passed, the scouts in the first car waved. As the second car passed, the girl remembers no one waved at her. The scoutmaster who was driving commented that they should have stopped and helped the girl. The young scout (now the husband) said “someone will help her.” They didn’t stop to help and just kept going to catch up with the other scouts traveling ahead of them.
So back to present time – The scoutmaster passed away last year and as the husband and wife were looking through the old photos, she asked her husband about a particular photo that she had never seen before of scouts on a trip. She then said “I remember that.” After comparing memories, they realized his wife was the young girl who was walking on the side of the road and the husband was the scout who didn’t stop to help.
Another incident transpired between the two as they were both ended up on a beach at the same time, glancing at one another, neither one knowing the other until later in life when they compared stories and memories.
We enjoyed hearing the couple’s stories and were so glad they shared them with us at the office. The couple didn’t have a big celebration to commemorate the 50th anniversary. She is a cancer survivor, and according to the husband, every day is a day of celebration for the both of them.
