Chance Encounter Leads to 70-Year Marriage for Mentone Couple
Posted
Kathy Cone-
MENTONE – Today marks the 70th wedding anniversary of a Mentone couple. Vernon and Betty Spurlock were married Oct. 10, 1943, at Central Christian Church, Grand Rapids, Mich., where they had met just a year before. Their journey together has taken them from the Great Lakes to Lake Tahoe and back again. It was on a Sunday night, Oct. 11, 1942, when a young Coast Guard recruit and a couple buddies hitched rides from their base in Grand Haven, Mich., for a night out in Grand Rapids. Vernon, just 17 and fresh out of Charleston, W. Va., didn’t realize his life would change that night. Betty, or as she tells it, “Elizabeth, but no one ever calls me that,” was attending youth group at the church in her home town as she often did. As fate would have it, her friend’s mother was driving that evening and came upon the hitchhiking recruits. She picked them up and took them to the church. There the young people talked and laughed and enjoyed the evening. Betty found a friend with a driver’s license, and they dropped off the young men at the bus station. She promised to write. Vernon returned to base where he remained another five months. Then he was chosen to leave the water and go ride a horse, when he was transferred to South Carolina to patrol the beaches at Hilton Head. He jokes that, “They thought I could ride, being from West Virginia!” He rode those beaches until discharged in October, 1943. First stop was Grand Rapids. The couple were married one year after their fateful meeting, in the place where they met. The wedding went off beautifully, except the photographer didn’t go to the church, requiring the couple to walk a couple blocks after the ceremony to his studio. Betty’s mother was not happy that the groom and his best man were nowhere to be seen. They had slipped into a car to catch the radio broadcast of a World Series game. Vernon and Betty laugh at this story, but there are still so many more in their store of memories. Rather than going off to Coast Guard Academy as he originally thought, he started working in the office equipment business. His work, repairing adding machines and calculators, took him to many states and cities, so Betty and the family packed up and moved with him. Leaving other midwest locations, he took a job with Warsaw Office Equipment. There he stayed 10 years, until leaving for Victor Adding Machines Co., Chicago. That job had him moving from San Antonio, Texas, to Charleston, back to San Antonio, then on to Kansas City, Mo., El Paso, Texas, and Reno, Nev. During those moves the family grew by four. They have two sons and two daughters. Three attended Warsaw High School and still live in the Warsaw area. While in Warsaw, Betty worked at Miller, Jones and Shine shoe store. She is a past president of the Warsaw American Legion Post #49 auxiliary, and sang in its chorus. Vernon managed pony league baseball and was even recognized for his good coaching. Vernon retired from Victor in 1987, after which time the couple moved to Mentone where they could be near their children and grandchildren. They chose that town because, as Vernon says, “I bowled in Warsaw, and there were a lot of bowlers from Mentone.” It sounded like a good idea. Today they enjoy their home and their family: Bill (and spouse Rosemary) Spurlock, Warsaw; Kris (and spouse Chuck) Pletcher, Etna Green; Robin (and spouse Jon) Briggs, Mentone; and Mike Spurlock, San Antonio. They have three grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. They are proud to say that their children also enjoy long-time marriages. At the wedding of their granddaughter, Patricia, the master of ceremonies asked couples to leave the dance floor if they had not been married more than five years. Then, he removed those under 10 years. Next, those under 25 years sat down. Vernon says that three couples remained standing: he and Betty, and the others were his children. Asked if they have any advice for those starting out, he smiled and said, “(Say) ‘Yes, Dear.’”
