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Wednesday, Sep. 16, 2009

70 years and still counting

It cost Hubert Clarke $5 to purchase a marriage license in 1939, but it was the best investment he ever made.

Thursday, Clarke and his bride, Nora, celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary.

Hubert was born in 1918, the seventh of nine children and the first boy in the family. Nora, one of five, was born in 1919.

The couple met on a blind date in 1937. Hubert was from Blakely, while his bride-to-be lived across the river in Columbia, Ala.

Hubert would borrow a car and travel the 17 miles down a dirt road to do his “courting.” The couple wed at the courthouse in Blakely, with the ceremony performed by Judge Babe Morgan.

Married in the middle of the Great Depression, the Clarkes didn’t have a honeymoon.

“Money wasn’t plentiful like it is now,” Hubert said. “Back then, a nickel looked like the size of a bedsheet.”

Hubert was earning $15 a week buying and selling livestock when the couple married. In the first few months of their marriage, they bought their groceries on credit and paid about $40 rent for their house.

“I remember the first time she was able to pay cash for our groceries, that was something,” Hubert said. “After that first time, we were always able to pay cash.”

After World War II, Hubert put in applications at several military bases. The couple moved to Warner Robins in 1951 after Hubert was offered a position as a machinist at Robins Air Force Base.

The family, which included sons Arthur and Bobby, lived on Arnold Boulevard in The Manor.

“Warner Robins was so different back then,” Nora said. “It was this little town, and everybody would go back home on the weekends.”

Hubert said he never imagined it would get so big.

“It has grown every year,” he said. “Something added every year.”

After the lunchroom manager quit at Charles Thomas Elementary School, located at the present site of Macon State College on Watson Boulevard, the principal asked Nora to fill in for a few weeks until he could find someone else.

That search took more than 20 years.

In the late 1960s, after her own children had graduated from college, Nora decided she wanted to attend college and become a teacher.

She first attended Middle Georgia College in Cochran, and then what is now Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, living in a dorm during the week and returning home on the weekends.

“I’d spend the weekend cooking so Hubert would have things to eat all week while I was gone,” said Nora, who would earn both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education after she was well into her 50s.

She started teaching at Centerville Elementary School the first year it opened in 1968.

Her granddaughter, Leigh Clarke Woodyard, would accompany her to the school to get her room ready every year. She would later follow in her grandmother’s footsteps as a teacher at the school.

Hubert retired from the base in 1976 and his wife from the school system a few years later. The couple made up for not having a honeymoon by traveling all across the United States.

For nine years, they wintered in Florida, making lasting friendships with “snowbirds.” They took several cruises and purchased an RV, taking their grandchildren on trips with them to see the country.

“We would just stop wherever and see things,” said Nora, who recalled taking her grandkids to a baseball game in Texas and seeing the Pacific Ocean, where her granddaugher lost a ring in the water.

“Just whatever we wanted to see.”

“On one trip,” Hubert said, “I bought 800 gallons of gasoline. You couldn’t travel like that now, with gas prices like they are.”

The Clarkes celebrated their 25th anniversary with a party at home, their 50th with a reception at church and their 60th again with a party at home.

Their 70th wedding anniversary was celebrated with a party at First United Methodist Church on Sunday.

The secret, the Clarkes say, to having a 70-year marriage is simple.

“If you really want to stay married, you do,” Nora said. “But to stay married, you have to give and take.”

That means through it all, Hubert added.

“You get good with the bad, and you get bad with the good. The bad times are hardest to adjust to, but the good times make up for it.”

Contact Alline Kent at allinekent@cox.net or at 396-2467.