Editor’s Note: This story has been edited from the original to change the name of the restaurant at the end of the story to Olive Garden of Queen Creek. The error was entirely mine. ~JRC
Max and Roberta Jerman have been together since their first day of college.
“The first day of school,” Roberta said, “we were standing in line to register and I saw this tall guy up front and I told my friend that if I could get a date with that guy, I’d buy some three-inch high heel shoes, which I had never been able to wear before. I was 5’10”.”
Max, for his part, thought Roberta was pretty special. At 6’7” he decided he was tired of going out with short girls.
“He saved me a seat in Bible class,” Roberta said.
They went steady on Halloween night.
The next summer he asked Roberta’s father for her hand in marriage.
They married Sept. 3, 1948. She was three months shy of her 19th birthday. He was 19.
This year, they will celebrate their 68th wedding anniversary.
The couple settled in Garden Grove, California, on a dirt road where there were groves of orange trees all around them. Max’s parents gave the couple a plot of land and working weekends and nights, Max built them a two-bedroom house.
Not long after they moved into their new house, Max was called up by the draft board. He wasn’t too worried about being drafted. “They were not taking anyone over 6’5”,” Roberta said. “Well, they said he was 6’5” and made him join.”
He went first to Fort Ord, California, and then to Fort Belvoir, VA where he received extra training as an engineer.
They sold their house and after paying back a loan to her parents, they were able to buy a brand new Studebaker car, but it was necessary to pick it up at the factory back east. Roberta and her mother took the train east to pick up the car and drove it down to Virginia, near Fort Belvoir, which was to be her home during Max’s training. Roberta bought a small trailer and settled in a park near where Max was stationed. She got a job as a typist at Phillips Machinery and Tractor Co. in Maryland and commuted daily from Virgina through Washington, D.C.
After Basic Training, Max was deployed to Europe. This was during the Korean War.
“He had a week to get me home to California,” Roberta said. “Pulling our trailer gave us car trouble and we only made it to Missouri, where his mom and dad had a farm.”
Roberta remembers that she was really sick on the trip. “But I thought it was because Max was leaving me.”
She continued, “We had been told that we would never have any children of our own – but I found out later that I was pregnant.”
Max wasn’t able to make it home for the baby’s birth.
“He never saw me pregnant,” Roberta said. She explained that as an Army Private he couldn’t get space on a plane and he had to return to the United States by ship. Their daughter, Cynthia, was six weeks old by the time Max was back in California.
The Army transferred Max to Fort Ord in Monterey, California, to finish out his time before discharging him.
After leaving the Army, Max and Roberta moved to Quincy, California where they helped build a vacation trailer park. The small family settled into a house on the property as managers of the park. Soon after Max received a phone call from Seattle Pacific College and a coach who Max had played basketball under in California. The coach told Max that he had three weeks to pack up and head to Seattle. Their rent and Max’s tuition was provided if Max would come up and play center on the basketball team.
So the next three winters were spent in Seattle and summers in Quincy working at the park. Max graduated after three years and was hired as a teacher and basketball coach in Quincy.
While in Quincy, the family adopted two little Native American boys, Richard (3) and Ronald (2).
“I heard about them at a teachers’ meeting at church and volunteered to babysit them,” Roberta said.
The boys’ mother was dying of cancer. “She had become a Christian,” Roberta said, “and was delighted for us to have the boys. I took them most every day to see her for over a year before she died.”
Roberta remembered the day they arrived at their home. When they drove up into the driveway, their daughter opened her arms up and called them “my brothers.”
Max’s career took him to Stanford University to work on a math program called Setts and Numbers and while working there, he earned his doctorate in math. The family headed to Pennsylvania for a teaching job at Penn State. From there, they headed back across the country to Seattle Pacific College and then the couple opened an educational software store, which lasted several years.
When they finally retired, the couple purchased a 5th wheel and joined a group called SOWERS (Servants On Wheels Ever Ready) who went from church to church helping them build and repair projects, which Roberta called “a lot of fun.”
They followed a large group of their church members to Arizona one summer and really liked it. They relocated to the Southeast Valley permanently, eventually building a home at the Links Estates, where they have lived for 14 years.
When asked what the best thing about Max, Roberta cited their lack of differences.
“He’s been very encouraging and very easy to get along with,” she said.
Max cut in at that point and said, “That’s because I say, ‘Yes, Dear.’”
Max offered some advice to other couples who want to stay married for as long as they. “Have a common faith,” he said, “so you both believe the same things.”
They wouldn’t have changed much about their life together, except maybe he would have gone to school more.
“We’ve been very compatible,” Roberta said.
They laughed over a memory from their wedding.
“My dad said, ‘Don’t bring her back,’” Roberta said.
Max added that Roberta was “out of warranty.”
But after 67 years together is the fire still there?
Absolutely, they said.
And more so.
Congratulations to Roberta and Max on their long marriage. The Southeast Valley Ledger and Olive Garden in Queen Creek are pleased to name them as San Tan Valley’s Longest Valentine. Olive Garden presented the couple with a gift certificate for a meal which Max and Roberta said they would share with the friends who nominated them.
Editor’s Note: Carrie Ribeiro assisted with this story.