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Every February 14 people have a reminder of how important it is to have someone to love and somebody to love you. Some married couples in the Cobscook and Quoddy area have celebrated a great many Valentine's Days together and feel very fortunate to have found the right person for them.
Loving one another and the church
Ellis and Wenona Small of Whiting, who will celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary on June 10, are still in love and happiest these days when sharing their gift of music with others.
Ellis, who is 84, grew up in Bucks Harbor, and Wenona Hall was living in Halls Mills. They met when both were students at Washington Academy in East Machias. Ellis was a year ahead of Wenona, and they didn't have any of the same classes. Both claim they can't remember the first time they noticed each other, but Wenona caught her future husband's eye, and he asked her out.
"She was quite an attractive girl," says Ellis. "And still is."
"We didn't go very far. Movies were popular," recalls Ellis of their dating days from 1947 to 1951, when he worked at a textile mill and Wenona at the sardine factory.
Wenona describes their wedding as "a little one," which was held in the East Machias Congregational Church parsonage on June 10, 1951, with her brother Hovey Hall and Ellis' sister Janice as attendants.
The couple made Whiting their home, and that is where they raised their sons, Stanley and Jeffrey, while Ellis worked in different electronic transmission jobs during the construction and operation of the Cutler Naval Station.
Ellis retired in 1988 and has spent the last 10 or 15 years helping his "Blueberry Queen" Wenona and her one-woman band entertain at Washington and Charlotte county venues.
"Ellis is a big part of it. I couldn't do it without him," says Wenona of her performances. "He keeps all the instruments working, and he sings, too."
"She's the band. I'm the band-aid," jokes Ellis.
Bookings for Wenona and her one-woman band are regularly made by the Eastport Senior Center, Eastport Memorial Nursing Home, the veterans' home and nursing home in Machias, Lincourt Manor in St. Stephen, Campobello Lodge nursing home and the Machias Wild Blueberry Festival.
Ellis and Wenona are also active "life members" of Machias Chapter #83, Order of the Eastern Star (OES). They have been serving the OES for over 50 years.
Looking back on their marriage, Wenona also credits the longevity to "loving one another and our church."
Family most important thing
Gary and Patti Craig of Eastport will be celebrating their 47th wedding anniversary on June 8. They were married in 1968, and Gary smiles as he remembers the first time he saw his future wife. "I had just gotten home after spending a year on an isolated island in Hawaii with the Coast Guard, and was sitting outside with my father when this beautiful girl came down the hill and stopped to ask if he needed anything. I found out her name was Patricia Kierstead and [later] asked her out."
Their first date was at Carman's Diner in St. Stephen, and Gary didn't think it went well. "I ordered steak and told her she could have anything she wanted, and she just ordered a hamburger. Here I was eating a steak and there she was with her hamburger. But I did kind of fall in love on that first date."
Craig had already served four years in the Air Force after graduating from Shead Memorial High School in 1958 and was near the beginning of a long career in the Coast Guard when Rev. Jack Perkins married Gary and Patti under the archway at her 17 Pleasant Street home. Her mother Beadie was matron of honor, and Gary's father James was best man.
"We've exchanged vows two more times since then," points out Patti. "Once when Gary got out of the service, and another on our 25th anniversary when the kids stood up with us."
The couple, who became parents to son Gary and daughter Tammy, spent the next 17 years as a Coast Guard family in locations like Libby Island, Gloucester, Alabama and West Quoddy Head before returning home to Eastport.
" It was a very unusual life. You have to be a certain type of person to be successful at it," says Gary. "But we bonded as a family."
"It was very interesting," says Patti of her role as Coast Guard wife and mother. "But it was hard on the kids. One year they went to seven different schools."
After moving home to Eastport, the couple has been active in many community activities, especially in support of local military veterans, and they are close to the most important people in their lives.
"Family is the most important thing to me," stresses Gary. "We have two wonderful kids, two wonderful grandkids, Justin and Brooke, and a nice wife. What more can you ask for?"
Marriages to stay
A Deer Island couple will be celebrating a 60th wedding anniversary next year. On June 19, 1956, 21-year-old Dale Barteau married 17-year-old Jean Glenna Chaffey in the United Baptist Church in Chocolate Cove, and the ladies of the village decorated it for the couple.
"It was a milestone for us. We were the next-to-last couple married there," recalls Dale of the building. "It had been built in 1828, and everything was hand-hewn."
Dale and Glenna met when they were in high school, and both went on to become teachers. "We both got a job in Millville in 1956, so we rented a house," recalls Dale. "I taught high school, while my wife taught eight grades in a school several miles out of town that had never been open in the winter before. There was an outhouse, and a kid with epilepsy who used gasoline to start the fire in that school building every day."
The Barteaus spent six years in Millville before returning home to Deer Island. "It's not easy to teach people you grew up with, but there was an opportunity for me to teach a whole new crowd from the one that was there when we left," points out Dale.
The couple bought a home in Chocolate Cove for $600 and raised two sons, John and Bill, on the island.
Dale's career took a very different turn when he purchased East Coast Ferries, the local ferry business that served Eastport. "My wife's father, Fremont Chaffey, was captain for many years, and I was deckhand and learned the ropes," he recalls. "I started the run to Campobello in 1968. People said, 'You'll never make it' but it was successful, and after 21 years I sold the business to Stan Lord."
The couple both share many recreational activities, including local history and genealogy. Dale believes the success of their marriage can be attributed to their similar upbringing. "It's smarter to find a mate nearby," he says. "Someone who has the same values as you."
"We make marriages to stay." |
