When Rose Emma Gulden and I married, we both were college students. How we met and married early became the highlight of my college years.

During my second year in college, I became state correspondent for the Detroit Free Press, sending in articles about college happenings.

One of my assignments was a gala student party. There I saw Rose Gulden for the first time, “across a crowded room.” Before leaving, I learned who she was.

The next day, I called her for a date. She was living in the Kappa Mu Delta sorority house. She was a junior and I was a sophomore. I identified myself by saying that I'd seen her at the party the night before, and asked her if she'd like to see a movie with me and have some hamburgers. She accepted.

That one date lengthened into many, and we saw each other often. Even during the summer vacation when I worked in Detroit, we dated during the weekends, while she was spending the summer with her parents in Mt. Clemens. Her parents and I got along famously together.

That fall, when we were supposed to return to college, she seemed downhearted. When I asked her what her difficulty was, she told me she could not return to college for her last year because her parents didn't have the money to pay her tuition costs and expenses because they also had two boys in college.

Since she was the one girl for me, I considered a possibility. I proposed marriage to her. At the time, I had sufficient money from my summer work and my Free Press job to support the both of us. I suggested that she could prepare our meals and take care of the apartment, leaving me additional time to earn more money.

She accepted the proposal, and a month later, after we had obtained a marriage license, we were married and lived in a two-room apartment.

While we exchanged our marriage vows on September 19, 1929, we were unaware of the big Depression that was about to descend upon the land following the stock market crash a few days later. The Depression did not affect us at that time, but it by the time we were out of college.

Now that I am 97 years old, those happy years we were together remain a shining memory. Like the song from the musical South Pacific counseled, I never wanted to let her go. But fate determined otherwise.

When she died in her forties due to breast cancer, after 28 wonderful years of marriage, she left me with three daughters (Rosemary, Gretchen, and Mary), the youngest (Mary) who was still living at home and only eleven years old.

For three years, I maintained the home and learned to cook, and even learned to bake bread. Four years later, I married Ruth Helen Meek Corbin, whose husband had succumbed to colon cancer.We married November 4, 1961.

After retiring as a high school teacher and Co-op Training coordinator in Alma, Michigan, Ruth and I moved to Clearwater, Florida.

We traveled all over the country, two to three months a year, first with a travel trailer and then with a motorhome, including a trip to Alaska on the Alcan Highway.

She discovered she had a knack for watercolor painting and ended up teaching art classes at Top of the World condominiums in Clearwater. I happily gardened organically for years and then, at age 80, became the Natural Gardening columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, which I continued to do for twelve years until I decided to share my knowledge globally and began to write for the Internet.

Although we had 34 happy years together, she ultimately succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 84. I am grateful that I still have her lovely paintings to enjoy.

I tried living by myself after her passing, but then something unexpected happened. I fell, one night, and broke my right arm. For three months, I had 24-hour home health care until my arm was healed and I could once again fend for myself.

Then a couple of years later, I once again fell and received compression fractures which put me into the hospital for several weeks. During my hospital stay, I realized that it was no longer safe for me to live alone, so I asked my daughter Mary to locate a nice assisted living facility and to pack up and sell my house.

I moved into a beautiful luxury apartment at an assisted living facility called The Oaks of Clearwater; but even though I was surrounded by the photos and paintings and furnishings that I loved, it just didn't feel like home.

So one day, I asked my daughter Mary if I could move in with her; and much to my surprise, she said yes! That was almost three years ago, and we've shared many adventures together, including moving into a larger home and hiring a wonderful live-in caregiver almost a year ago named Nancy Rapp who has become part of the family.

I've been very fortunate having been surrounded by people I love, and who love me, throughout my life. Now as I near 100 and can't move as quickly as I used to, I'm still enjoying my life because I am able to write and create, and because I have a loving and caring family, including my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. I agree with Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. There truly is no place like home, and nothing more important than loving friends and family. This is what I've learned, having lived almost a century.

© 2004 Leo VanMeer

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